Tag: portrait

Olivia

I drew this portrait of Olivia during one of my Sketchbook Skool Spark classes. I’m always so interested to see how my drawings done during these classes turn out. I only have around 45 minutes in which to do most of the drawing so I have to work very quickly.

I can do a little bit of finishing up afterwards but most of the work needs to be done during the class session and so there’s not much time to think about choices, it’s much more a case of simply drawing and living with the consequences. In this class the line drawing was OK, but not great, the face tones came out well, but the hair was a bit of disaster, much too bright, poorly coloured, and needing emergency rescue with coloured pencil.

Of course I could have recoloured the hair completely in Procreate or worked it over for hours with coloured pencils, but I’d much rather leave it as it is as a reminder to myself of this particular lesson and how much I enjoy getting it wrong and figuring out how to make it look a little better! And that I need to practice drawing red hair.

Taelor

Back in my Copic comfort zone for this portrait of Taelor from the Museum by Sktchy app. I was concerned that I’d gone too dark with the shadow at one point (during the ugly stage, of course) but it all came together in the end. I always have to remind myself to trust my process…

Annett

I’ve been teaching some iPad drawing in my Sketchbook Skool Spark class for the past few weeks and this is the portrait that I was working on in Procreate in those classes.

We started by learning how to adjust brushes and work with layers and clipping masks before moving on to drawing our portrait of Annett. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m amazed at how much progress the students have made!

Godfree

I’ve been working on this portrait of Godfree from Sktchy slowly over several days, just layering up that hair bit by bit with my Bic. I could have continued with more layers but I was pretty happy with how it looked at this point so stopped here. Just love the meditative scratch scratch of vertical hatching with a Bic pen.

Svet

Svet doesn’t actually look like a Disney Princess in real life. I somehow turned her into one while drawing her portrait, mainly by making her eyes far too large. She does have beautiful big eyes, but not as ridiculously big as I’ve drawn them!

Everything in this portrait is slightly out of proportion and place ( I mean, what is going on with that left arm?), creating more of a caricature than a portrait, but I was so absorbed in my process that I didn’t see this until I was finished.

And this is where posting all my drawings keeps me honest! We all have good days and bad days when it comes to making art, but I always learn something from the process. Today I learned that I really should try not to get so caught up in the process when making digital art, that I should take more breaks, step back and look at what I’m doing, try to see how it looks from more of a distance. And that’s valuable learning. I also enjoyed the drawing process so it was a valuable experience too.

Em

This portrait of Em is an example of one of those drawings/paintings that goes wrong from the beginning and I just had to resolve to keep going and learn what I could from the process.

I made a huge absentminded error once I’d finished my line drawing by forgetting I was working in my watercolour sketchbook and intended to use watercolour for my base colour. I started to add shadow with a Copic marker and realised my mistake as soon as I’d drawn a line – you can see that line moving down the forehead above the right eyebrow!

My initial instinct was to abandon the portrait at that point but then I decided I would carry on, enjoy the process and see what I could learn from trying to disguise my grey-pink Copic line. So I painted on with watercolour and then added coloured pencil. I don’t think you would see that line unless you know it’s there and look for it so I’m happy with what I did in the end.

But the entire portrait is not quite right. That error early on was a sign of my mind being not fully focused on my drawing, which is how it is right now.

Anjelica

I went back to my Copic comfort zone for today’s portrait of Anjelica from the Museum by Sktchy app.

Sandro

This is Sandro from the Museum by Sktchy app drawn on an iPad Pro using the Procreate app.

Aly

You can’t beat a couple of hours of meditative ballpoint pen drawing for finding your zen on the weekend. This portrait of Aly was such a relaxing draw!

Ski Mask

I had so much fun drawing this ski mask in Sketchbook Skool’s Drawing Faces class yesterday that I almost forgot to post it!