Photo: Clothing Folds Tutorial in ink

Continuing with day four of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Today I did some portraits but also a tutorial for how to sketch wrinkles and folds in clothing.

Day Four of my 365 Day Sketch Challenge

I’ve been watching Dylan’s advent live Youtube sketch along sessions, but this week’s resource photos have been characters from The Matrix, and I haven’t felt inspired to sketch them, although I have been watching them to follow his technique of identifying shadow areas.

I know from my urban sketching people activities that there has to be something about my subject that intrigues me. Whether it’s their face, hair, clothes, or their stance. If my interest isn’t piqued, the motivation to sketch evades me.

But here’s what I was motivated to sketch today…

Drawing Earthsworld Challenge

I did the latest Drawing Earthsworld Challenge from Facebook. I think I may have drawn this photo before independently, because she seemed familiar.

Just recently I’ve been sketching with my Sailor Fude pen, but today I switched to using my uni-ball eye with a micro nib. The waterproof ink flows beautifully, and I was able to experiment with different line weights by just holding the pen more loosely. This was good for sketching the delicate broken lines beneath the eyes and some of the wrinkles.

I was going to leave this portrait as a pen sketch, but I couldn’t resist adding some colour. The source image showed this lady with a much longer face, but because I started with the eyes first and built up the face and other features from there, I lost sight of the overall shape. I did say in yesterday’s post that I was going to focus on shapes before details, but I forgot!

Teeth as a single negative shape

I experimented with sketching the teeth as a single negative shape, instead of drawing in the individual teeth. The smaller the portrait, the more useful this approach is. So for urban sketches where the people sketches are on a much smaller scale, this would probably become my go-to technique.

Sketching Clothing Folds and Creases

I’m currently a Sketching Scottie Patreon, and I did his Clothing Secrets tutorial on Patreon which was really informative. Scottie has a relaxed style of teaching, and encourages the simplification of images, no matter what you sketch.

Most of these are sketched with 100% continuous line, and I like that style of drawing. I attempted the first reference twice, and the second attempt turned out much better.

Once warmed up, I was able to do all of the other tutorial references just once. I usually have real trouble leaving sketches as line drawings. They feel unfinished without any colour. But I forced myself to leave most of these as ink drawings … except the last one! The Indian clothing was just too tempting not to colour in. Plus that part of the tutorial was about not using lines for patterns, and instead using the watercolour to create an impressionistic view of the patterns instead.

I’m not usually a fan of adding white highlights with a Posca pen, but I made an exception for this last sketch and I have to admit, I like what it adds to the sketch. So I just have to be less of a puritan when it comes to watercolour and be open to adding white highlights on top of my watercolour if it’s going to add value to the sketch.

You can also the sketching scottie clothing secrets tutorial for free on Youtube.

The Youtube version just has the ink sketches, whereas the Patreon version has an extended watercolour lesson, and includes all of the resource images. His Patreon group is very active, and Scottie provides feedback and input on the sketches you share with him.

Sketching Scottie on Instagram

Here’s the clothing tutorial on Scottie’s Instagram account.

Portrait of Benjamin Zephaniah from Photo

Late night portrait of a poet who showed up in my Instagram feed, it was a fabulous poem, but for the life of me I can’t find it now. But I did find Benjamin again and found out that he’s passed away, so thought I’d sketch him as a homage.

A bit of a mixed bag today, because I got sidetracked on sketching the folds and creases in clothing. But it was a worthwhile tutorial. If you’re just getting started with drawing people, or want to hone your sketching skills, Sketching Scottie is a great resource. And while you’re about it, how about listening to some of Benjamin’s poetry readings.