Images

Lil

What a great face! One of the things I love about the Sktchy app is that it gives portrait artists the opportunity to browse through many thousands (probably millions now I think about it) of photos to find faces that you want to draw. I have over 2000 in my queue waiting to be drawn and just looking through those to find the one I want to draw today can be a major exercise! But most days it’s easy. I usually know what medium I want to work with on any particular day and that guides my choice of photo.

Today was an iPad drawing day and Lil’s photo called out to me as soon as I saw it. I used Lisa Bardot’s pencil box brushes in the Procreate app on my iPad Pro.

Sulphur

Some days I don’t have much time for drawing but I try to maintain my commitment to a daily portrait. That means producing quicker sketchier portraits like this one of Sktchy muse Sulphur. Sometimes I manage to find a better likeness in these quick portraits – I did today.

The amount of time available always affects my choice of medium. I would never choose to draw a portrait with Copic markers if time was short. I might start one on the iPad, knowing I could easily leave it and return to it later. But if I want to start and finish a portrait quickly then I will always choose watercolour or coloured pencils. Today I chose to use Polychromos coloured pencils in a HannehmĂĽhle Nostalgie sketchbook.

Luna

Luna has the perfect face for me to draw. Rosy cheeks, shiny hair, freckles and gorgeous skin tones, she’s right in my Copic comfort zone. And those hair buns were so much fun to draw.

I drew this in my A4 Moleskine sketchbook with an 01 Copic multiliner and Copic markers.

Wael

Playing with line over my watercolour in this portrait of Sktchy muse Wael and struggling to get my drawings finished in time this week as I find myself obsessing over British politics. But I tore myself away from Twitter and drew. I worked this in a Laloran sketchbook with Zecchi watercolours and Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Muffin

Drawing dogs is always so much fun. It’s important to get the eyes and nose right, but the rest is fairly straightforward. Sktchy muse Muffin is soaking up the sun so it was important to get the closed eyes and the shadows more or less right and to capture something of his handsomeness – is that a word? Anyway I’m happy with how it turned out – he looks like a contented doggy.

I drew this in my Moleskine sketchbook with Copic multiliners and markers.

Hannah

This is Sktchy muse Hannah. I drew her on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the Procreate app and Lisa Bardot’s wonderful Copicat brushes.

I’ve uploaded a Procreate timelapse video of my drawing process to my YouTube channel – if you’d like to watch it you can view it here.

Lana

Worked really hard at not overworking this one after a whole series of overworked watercolours. Very happy that I managed to keep the colour in this portrait of Sktchy muse Lana simple.

I worked this in a HannehmĂĽhle Nostalgie sketchbook with Zecchi watercolours and Polychromos coloured pencils.

Meghan

This portrait of Sktchy muse Meghan is for this week’s Old School Sktchy Wax challenge theme “figure study”. I’m always fascinated by bodies that can move and hold positions that my body hasn’t managed for at least 20 years. Even standing or lying straight is a challenge for my body these days so I’m intrigued by the idea of skeletons and whole musculoskeletal systems that can move into and maintain postures like Meghan’s in the portrait above. My own body’s limitations have made me more, rather than less, interested in the biology and physics of how we move – and the aesthetics of it too. As my movements have become more crablike I love to see fluidity and absolute ease in the movements of others. And to draw it.

I drew this on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil and Procreate using a Blackwing Pencil brush.

George

This is my very beautiful friend Georgina, aka George. I first met George 3+ years ago when I was just beginning to draw faces. She has seen my portraiture develop on Instagram and a few weeks ago she messaged to ask if she could be one of my daily faces. I jumped at the chance of having a live model and we had a lovely time chatting while I sketched yesterday. I thought the portrait was a bit of a disaster when I started to add colour to it this morning but suddenly, after about an hour, George appeared on the page in front of me.

Drawing someone you know is always a little more anxiety-inducing than drawing a Sktchy face because capturing a likeness feels so much more important – so once I could see a likeness I was happy. I don’t need to have a perfect likeness but I do want to capture the essence of a person and I feel like I’ve done that here. There is something very “George” about this portrait.

I drew this on Bristol paper with an HB pencil, Copic multiliners and Copic markers and finished it with Prismacolor coloured pencils.

Fabrizio

I’m struggling a little with my coloured pencil portrait drawing. I’m not really enjoying drawing very precisely; it takes too long and I don’t much like the results. So I tried something else with this portrait. I worked much faster and less fussily and I like the results so I’ll try this again.

I used some really old (but virtually unused) Derwent Studio coloured pencils I found during a clearout last weekend in a HannehmĂĽhle Nostalgie sketchbook.