Polychromos coloured pencils

Vic

I had my Covid booster on Sunday and I’ve had my usual post-vaccination sickness ever since so I haven’t been well enough to manage both work and drawing until today, when I did just get in this quick sketch of Vic.

Jan

This is Jan from the Museum by Sktchy app. I’m taking a much slower approach to my drawing and watercolour painting when I’m not actually teaching in a class at the moment (when I have to work fast because we only have about because we about 40 minutes of class time to work on a drawing). I’m think I’m getting better results from working slower.

Jon

Straightforward watercolours and coloured pencils for this portrait of Jon from Sktchy today.

Amber

I’m in the middle of a 2-week hospital course prior to hopefully getting a spinal cord stimulator to help with my chronic neuropathic pain, so I’ve had no time at all to draw this week. So it’s been nice to get some time with my sketchbook today. This is Amber from Sktchy and I used both watercolours and coloured pencils for this portrait in my Fabriano Venezia sketchbook.

Julieta

This is the lovely Julieta from Sktchy. I used to work only in Copic markers but I think it’s fair to say that I couldn’t imagine working only with markers these days. I always work over them with coloured pencils to add more subtlety and sheen to the skintones and highlights in the hair. They are also great for working over smalll errors in my linework!

Andrew

This is Andrew from Sktchy and, of course, I’ve been playing around with chiaroscuro again. This time I was using Copic markers and coloured pencils.

Kaitlin

I’ve been taking a course by artist Marco Mazzoni on the Domestika teaching platfom on drawing chiaroscuro portraits with coloured pencils. Chiaroscuro is a Italian term for a technique which uses strongly contrasting light and dark to create art.

This portrait of Kaitlin from Sktchy is the first one I’ve created using the technique I ’ve been learning in this course. I need a lot of practice but I’m pretty happy with this for a first attempt.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Marco Mazzoni’s course you can find information about it here.

Joshua

I haven’t drawn for several days and how my fingers know it. They’ve been itching, twitching, reminding me that I need to draw a portrait. But I’ve had both computer and printer problems. I can survive without a printer but in these Covid lockdown remote working days I absolutely can’t survive without a computer. And I’m self-employed so I can’t rely on an IT department to help me out, I have to solve the problem myself. Fortunately I’m pretty techie and, with the help of YouTube, I usually can. Three days later I’ve solved my computer problems- but not my printer ones – though I was woken at 2am with a crashing migraine, my body’s reminder that I have chronic illness and I haven’t been pacing.

So this morning I took some time out and drew Joshua from Sktchy. This is my first watercolour in a new Fabriano Venezia sketchbook- I wasn’t sure how it would take the water but it was much better than I expected. And I feel so much better after a couple of hours of art therapy.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas if you celebrate it – and if you don’t I hope you have an enjoyable peaceful week in any case. Thank you to Shianne from Sktchy for providing the inspiration photo for this painting.

Lil

This is Lil from Sktchy drawn in what is now becoming my signature Copic method of a basic Copic marker drawing followed by some more work in coloured pencil and then some cleaning up and finishing touches on my iPad.