Musink session portrait
Day One Hundred and Fourteen of Sketching People
Continuing with day 114 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. My second time attending this Wednesday speed sketching portrait session hosted by Mark. Some manic and interesting music to accompany our scribblings, and I got asked to pose for one of the tracks.
Musink Session Speed Sketching
I joined for this hour-long zoom sketching session, where all poses are the length of a music track. I was going to sketch with my fountain pen, but for some reason it wasn’t flowing, so I decided to opt for a fine liner with water soluble ink in it so I could smudge the lines with water. Not my usual style, but it’s good to mix it up. And the more I delve into learning tutorials, the more I’m realising the importance of being able to identify and render accurate tonal values. Colour doesn’t matter, it’s the tonal range that’s more important.
In today’s session I used a Stabilo point 88 Fine 0.4 brown water soluble fine liner, which I bought when I first started urban sketching and was obsessed with finding the “perfect” shade of brown ink. I amassed a large collection of brown fine liners, and still have all of them. I now much prefer sketching with black ink, but I can’t bear to part with these pens with brown ink … just in case. I like this pen because it has a gentle bleed when you add water.
My approach to sketching with it is to sketch directly in the fine liner, and then grab a watercolour brush with clean water, and blur the lines to create some tonal value shading. Then add some additional shading using watercolour (Neutral Tint and Raw Umber). I like this use of a limited palette – but I miss my black ink lines. I’ll have to search through my mass of black fine liners and see if there’s a water soluble one that’ll bleed and smudge.
Portraits of Me
I posed for one of the music tracks in this speed sketching session, and I’ve been tagged on Instagram by the various artists. It’s so interesting to see the different sketching styles being used, and the different art materials.
