Today’s Sktchy portrait is of Christine’s husband. I don’t know his name; Christine posted his photo on Sktchy but didn’t add his name. I love his wistful expression. Last week I made a commitment to draw a portrait of an older person at least once a week in honour of all the older people dying in care homes in the UK in the coronavirus pandemic. This is this week’s portrait.
I drew this on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.
This is Laura, a wonderful Sktchy artist and my model for the day. I love her gaze in the Sktchy photo I used for this portrait and I’m really pleased with how well I managed to capture it. I’m beginning to feel like I’m developing a style with ballpoint pens that I like and can really work with. Drawing with them is starting to feel natural rather than like the battle it was just 5 or 6 portraits ago.
I drew Laura in a Moleskine sketchbook with a range of Bic 4-colour ballpoints.
I have a beautiful set of Japanesque watercolours in shades of black. I don’t use them very often but when I do they always perform beautifully and I tell myself I must use them more often. The Sktchy inspiration photo of Seyede that I used for this portrait cried out for me to use them and I’m so happy with the finished portrait. I used the blue black, red black and green black.
This portrait is the last one in my latest Moleskine watercolour sketchbook. you can see a flip through of the entire sketchbook on YouTube here.
This is Sktchy muse Holly. I drew her in a Midori cotton sketchbook with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils.
It’s been a rough week.
I drew Alyssa in a Moleskine sketchbook with Bic ballpoint pens.
Cody didn’t look sad in the Sktchy inspiration photo for this portrait but somehow all my portraits end up looking sad at the moment. It’s not deliberate, they just end up that way. They’re being affected/infected by coronavirus.
I used Zecchi watercolours and Prismacolor coloured pencils in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook for this portrait.
I drew Saghar’s portrait with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils in a Midori cotton sketchbook.
The Sktchy app, which is the source of almost all my inspiration photos, is mostly predominantly full of photos of younger people, and mostly young beautiful women. Of course men post photos there too and parents post plenty of photos of their children. But, as in society, people over 40, and especially women over 40, are largely invisible, and for older people , those over 60, even more so. This isn’t true for the Sktchy artist community, of course, just for the “muse” community, the people who posts selfies wanting to be drawn. Most of the images of older people you find if you hunt them down are of other artists who’ve posted a few pictures for their profile. But there are a few wonderful older muses who get drawn often (1) because they are fabulous to draw and (2) because there are so few of them. So if you’re an older person reading this and would like your portrait drawn by lots of different artists download the Sktchy app and upload some good selfies.
I wanted to draw someone older today because I wanted to honour the many thousands of older people who are dying in the UK at the moment and whose deaths are not even being counted properly. It must seem like many of them are invisible to everyone except their loved ones. So it felt important to say that they are not invisible, that they are not forgotten, if I am thinking about them then so are millions of others.
I’ve decided to try to draw a Sktchy portrait of an older person once a week in honour of those dying in the community of coronavirus, mostly older people, many of whose deaths are not being properly recorded.
I painted Lesley with Zecchi watercolours in a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.
Today’s portrait is a seagull drawn from a Sktchy photo uploaded by Kris. I live in Brighton on the south coat of England, a city with its fair share of seagulls. Some consider them a plague, personally I love them.
Every year two seagulls nest in our chimney pots and around this time of year their eggs hatch and for a couple of months I watch my chimney pots as the chicks grow into fledglings. I love the expectation, waiting to see how many chicks there are, trying to count them as they start to move around between the chimney pots, never entirely sure until they are big enough to fight for space in their cramped quarters.
This year the gulls are back again and I’ve been watched them build their nest and guard it for some time. I’m pretty sure the chicks have now hatched because one of the gulls is permanently stationed on the chimney and they appear to be feeding chicks, but they’re not moving around yet. It feels more important to me than ever before that they are there this year, because they are a daily reminder to me that the world is still turning, that nature is still doing what it does, it’s patterns are unchanged, if anything they are reinforced by the slowdown in economic growth. Watching the seagulls carry on with their lives just as they do every year is the most reassuring thing I have seen this spring. It brings me peace in a way that nothing else has done. I’m hoping there are at least 2, perhaps even 3, chicks this year. I’ll let you know.
I drew the full on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app.
Drawn in a Midori cotton sketchbook with Copic markers.
drawing faces 