Tag: Sktchy

Faun

The Brighton-based life drawing school “Draw Brighton” started a Patreon at the beginning of the Coronavirus lockdown to provide an income to help support the teachers and life models while the school is closed. I’m a patron and receive enormous bundles of amazing photos to draw from every month but I haven’t got around to drawing from many of them. But finally I painted this from one of their “Drawing Circus” collections. I’m afraid I don’t know the models name.

I painted this in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished it with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

If you’d like to know more about Draw Brighton and/or their Patreon you can find more details here.

Beata

Beata

This is Beata, drawn from Sktchy for this week’s Sktchy Blended Portrait Party. I drew the portrait with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils in a Midori cotton sketchbook.

Sassa

Sassa

I drew Sassa in my small Emilio Braga notebook with Bic ballpoint pens. It’s always a little strange seeing a scan of a small portrait write larger on my iPad or laptop screen – my pen strokes look so much larger and every error is magnified. Sassa’s ear, which isn’t right in my small drawing, is so much more obviously wrong here. But I remind myself that it doesn’t really matter – sharing is simply what keeps me accountable, what makes me keep drawing. It’s the process that really matters, not the outcome.

This is just the fourth drawing in my Emilio Braga notebook and already the notebook is starting to come apart at the seams. I love the paper – it’s a great surface for drawing on with ballpoints. But the notebooks are just that, notebooks designed for writing in, not drawing in. They are clearly not designed for the fairly heavy handling of my ballpoint pen drawing. It seems to be way that I keep turning the book when I’m hatching that is pulling on the stitching. I’m quite frustrated anyway that it doesn’t seem to be up to the job and I might have to abandon it.

Mike in a (mandatory?) mask

Mike

Wearing a mask is mandatory on public transport in the UK from today unless you have a health reason not to wear one so I thought I’d mark the occasion with a portrait of Sktchy muse Mike wearing his mask. I’m glad that finally mask wearing is becoming acceptable in this country. I hope that with the easing of the lockdown it becomes more commonplace and that this helps to inhibit any second wave.

I’ve found lockdown incredibly difficult and, while I’m not rushing out of the house and heading to the shops today because I’m not convinced it’s safe to do so yet, I’m hoping against hope that people will be sensible and the death rate will continue to fall.

I drew Mike with Polychromos coloured pencils in a HannehmĂĽhle Nostalgie sketchbook.

Lorraine

Lorraine

Lorraine is both an artist and a muse on Sktchy and her was such a wonderful face to lose myself in today. So many layers of colour and such expressive lines – and those fabulous eyes.

I painted this portrait in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook with Zecchi Toscana watercolours and finished it with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Cody

Cody

Cody is one of my favourite Sktchy muses. He has a great face to draw and his photos are so interesting. This isn’t my best work, not having the best week pain-wise, but I do think it captures Cody’s personality very well, and I love that about it.

I drew Cody in my Midori cotton sketchbook with Copic markers and Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Noppadol

Noppadol

Such a great name and such a great face – when I saw his photo on Sktchy Noppadol was an irresistible draw. Some I can browse Sktchy for hour’s trying to find a face I want to draw and other times one jumps right out and grabs me immediately and Noppadol’s was the grabbing kind – and I’m glad it’s a smiley face. It’s been a while since I’ve drawn a great smile so I’m guessing it’s a good sign that I wanted to draw one today.

I drew this in my Emilio Braga notebook with Bic Cristal and Bic 4-way multicolour pens.

Angela

Angela

I’ve been having fun today making ink from poppy petals. Once I had some ink I drew this portrait of Sktchy member Angela with my hand whittled pens. Then I squeezed lemon juice on the portrait to turn the ink pink on the hood, cheeks, eyes, and nose and I brushed a little of the juice onto the eyes too. I love how pink it became! I’m really enjoying playing with these natural inks – I sourced some gum arabic today and I’m hoping I can get hold of some baking soda in the next day or two, all of which will help me experiment more.

I used poppy ink made from foraged poppy petals, freshly squeezed lemon juice, pens whittled from a branch picked up on a dog walk and a Seawhites sketchbook.

Delphine

Delphine

I retreated to my comfort zone for a couple of hours to draw today’s Sktchy muse Delphine, because I could and I wanted to. This was drawn with Copic markers in a Midori cotton sketchbook.

Lois

Lois

This is a portrait of Lois for Lesson 2 of the Sktchy course Ink Naturally with Dylan Sara. Dylan showed us how to draw a portrait with 2 contrasting home-made inks and a hand made calligraphy pen. He used ink made with turmeric and walnuts.

I didn’t have any turmeric or walnuts so I made ink from paprika (I just added hot water and that’s the yellow ink) and tea – that’s the brown ink. I added a drop of India ink to my brown tea ink to darken it because it wasn’t dark enough. I drew the portrait using a pen I made from a whittled stick a year or so ago. It has a fat rounded nib rather than a more blunt calligraphy nib. I’m pretty happy with this given I was just using what I could find in my house. I’ll be buying some turmeric and walnuts this week and making some ink for further experimentation…