Moving onto Inks

    In the previous few posts I've been using 2.5mm lead holder on toned 5.5 x 8.5 inch paper and the portraits have come out well enough. However, the most important thing for any artist is proportion, and this can be studied in any scale. So, I'll work small. For the 8B graphite sketches, I forbade myself from blending, as I was trying to get used to the idea of pen sketches. The portraits below are done on 9x12 sheets. The inks were put on 140-lbs. hot-press paper, and were done from right to left, because I'm left-handed.

    This is my first time working with multiple tones-- each in a different Pentel Aquash water brush. It... isn't going smoothly. Strangely, the 1 (ink) to 8 (water) diluted ink seems darker than the 1 to 4 diluted ink. Maybe it has something to do with the Pen & Ink India Black brand I've been using, or maybe these brush pens aren't staggering the ink like they're supposed to. Maybe I just need to thin the inks a little-- a lot more. We'll see.

    Also, it seems to be a bad idea to ink dark-to-light, as I did with Sentenza (2).

Portraits on Toned Paper 2

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1969)

Brazil (1985)

Portraits on Toned Paper

     I’ve been away for a while and am now returning to the practice with a few portraits taken from Art Models 7. By the time I took my “short break” a few months ago, the final crunch of the semester was fast approaching. Getting everything squared away took longer than I thought, as always. It’s just as well. I only ever notice an increase in skill after a break.

     I don’t think I’m using the toned paper and white charcoal to their fullest, but I can say that my portraits have never looked better. Naturally, they are not as accurate or swift as I would like, but that comes down to practice. What matter is this: I can get a face on the page. Not gracefully, but sure enough. What remains is to draw face after face after face, so that I am comfortable enough with the placement of features to invent faces from any and every angle. Then, I can work on honing my technique—and my technique is very rough. In short, I have to master the long way before I can start working on shortcuts (for instance, laying down the shading in one or two layers, or leaving certain portions of a portrait strategically unfinished). I’ll only consider myself skilled when I can sketch one feature to the next with proper proportions without laying landmarks beforehand. But of course, that won’t happen overnight. So, for now I sketch portraits.

     I’ll be breaking out the watercolors when I have a palette and easel next month. For now, I’ll post every Sunday. Posting every other day was a bad idea.