Ballpoint pen sketching is by far the most meditative for me – I think it’s the repetitive hatching in one direction that makes it feel so relaxing. And I have another big week on my hospital neuromodulation course this week so I needed a calming day today so I decided to use ballpoint pens for this portrait of Juan from Sktchy.
I love it when people upload photos of themselves pulling faces onto Sktchy. It’s so much more interesting to draw unusual facial expressions than the regular “straight to camera” smile.
If you’re a Sktchy muse reading this and wondering what kind of photos you need to post to get drawn, this is something Sktchy artists are always talking about off-site. Personally I like clear crisp photos with great eyes, interesting skin tones, good shadows, freckles, lots of reflected light, hands… no photo will have everything I want but those are things that catch my eye. Photos I avoid are ones that are too blurry, anything that has been touched up to create clear smooth skin (it might look great in beauty photos but it’s totally uninteresting to paint), and lots of teeth (teeth are most artists’ nightmare and I struggle to make them look good), and ones with Snapchat filters of any kind.
But at the end of the day everyone has their own personal preference and what I don’t like might well appeal to someone else – so don’t be put off from posting your favourite photos. Most importantly, as with all social media, interact with people and comment on their work. I always check out the photos of everyone who comments on my work to see if they have photos I might want to draw.
This is Raman from Sktchy. I drew him in my Life Noble Note Plain sketchbook with Bic 4 colour ballpoint pens.
This is a portrait of Nob from Sktchy. The portrait was an experiment to see if the coloured pencil chiaroscuro method I learned last week would work with ballpoint pens. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
Still working through this mini crisis of confidence, which is showing up in my lines at the moment I think. But I know that if I persevere sooner or later I’ll find my way through. In the meantime you can enjoy (or not) seeing how it shows up in my work 😂. This is Gen from Sktchy drawn in Bic ballpoint pen.
This has been a long slow draw over a few days but I got there in the end. It’s a portrait of Jeeb from Sktchy for the “mouth” class of my Sktchy portrait anatomy class. I decided to use ballpoint pen for the portrait because I find mouths so hard to draw with ballpoints. Mouths are definitely my Achilles heel anyway ; they are unquestionably the facial feature I find the hardest to get right and I really struggle to get that roundness with ballpoint pens. Anyway I’m reasonably happy with how it turned out and I managed to draw teeth and they look OK!
I totally lost the likeness in this ballpoint pen drawing of Appollonia from Sktchy yet it’s one of my favourite drawings ever. Why? Because I think there’s a really comic book quality to it and it’s the first time I’ve seen that in one of my own drawings. I’m a huge consumer of graphic novels so perhaps it was inevitable that something of what I was seeing in those books would eventually show up in my work but I never really expected it to. And I’m so excited now I’ve seen it. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do it again but I do hope so.
This is Ángel from Sktchy drawn with Bic 4 colour ballpoint pens in a Life Noble Note Plain notebook.
It’s back to Bics for today’s portrait of Raquel from Sktchy.
This is the lovely Raul from Sktchy. His photo makes me think of warm sunny days, which is exactly what I want to be thinking of on a cold January morning locked down in the UK. I drew this with my Bic 4-colour ballpoints in my Life Noble Note Plain Notebook.
drawing faces 