Collection of speed sketching portraits

Day Fifty-Five of Sketching People

Continuing with day 5 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. I attended Dylan’s speed sketching portrait session on zoom.

Speed Sketching with Dylan

Tuesday is the live 2 hour zoom speed sketching event, Drawing with Dylan, with poses from 30 seconds to 6 minutes.

I sketched using pencil gesture sketches to get the shape and perspective of the head, and then inked the portraits. I’ve recently started using my Noodler’s Flex Nib Fountain pen and black Carbon waterproof ink.

During the sketching session I messed up a couple of portraits because the Carbon Ink I’m using seems to take longer to dry than I’m used too, and when I added Tombow grey for tonal shading, it smudged the ink. So I’m going to have to either put the tonal shading down first, and then add the ink lines, or just wait until the ink is dry to finish the portraits off.

I don’t mind waiting to add the ink lines after the pose is finished, because I’ve hopefully captured enough details with the gesture sketch, but I’d really like to be able to add the tonal shading during the actual pose, so I don’t have to try and guess at it. Each pose is done in a different environment with different lighting, so the tonal shading required can vary dramatically between poses.

When I sketch with my fineliner the ink dries almost immediately, and I’m able to add Tombow shading almost straight away. So I can either switch back to using a fineliner, or experiment with some of the other sketch inks I have (Octopus, and R&K Sketch Ink), to see if different brands dry quicker than this Carbon Ink.

Speed Sketching Portraits

After the session I added colour Tombow backgrounds to each of the portraits. I really love these bright vibrant colours of these water-soluble brush pens. I don’t use them often, except when I’m travel sketching and want to use them to add a bit of spot colour to a tonal sketch.

But in this scenario, I wish I hadn’t added bright backgrounds to these portraits.

There was a handful of the quick sketches that looked really effective as simple ink lines. But as soon as I got rid of the white background, it detracted from the simplicity and elegance of the ink lines.

Something to bear in mind in my next speed sketching session. Sometimes, less is better.

Note to self: If I like a black and white sketch, I may want to add colour, but I don’t always need to!