Two Biro Portraits 

Day One Hundred and Twenty of Sketching People

Continuing on with day 120 of my #Kick365 sketching challenge to draw people in ink and watercolour. Biro sketch practice for the Dyan Sara’s Expressive Portraits Class.

Portraits in Biro for Expressive Portrait Class

We’re on week two of Dylan’s Expressive Portrait Class. Last week we focused on using a fineliner to sketch portraits, and this week we’re using a biro. Who knew the humble biro could be so flexible and interesting to use?

I wasn’t looking forward to sketching with a biro, because I do love my fountain pen, but you can vary the pressure you use, and create lines ranging from a delicate feather-light line to a sturdy dark line.

It took me a while to find a biro. I have a basic BIC pen, and two BIC pens that each have four different colours in them. I had some of these at school – many decades ago, when I thought they were the hight of sophistication. I’ve had these pens for years, not sure why I bought them, but glad I had them waiting in the wings to sketch this week’s portraits.

There’s tutorials and class assignments that are part of this portraits course, but each weekday morning Dylan hosts his 10 at 10. Where he spends ten minutes sketching a portrait, it’s an informal sketch along scheduled at 10am German time CET on YouTube. He always has an interesting array of reference images, and this week he’s sketching from a book that contains a collection of photo booth images from olden times.

As Dylan is currently running his Expressive Portrait Classes, he’s using the same sketching tools in his 10 at 10, that he’s using in his portrait class. So I’m using these sketch along live videos as an opportunity for biro sketching practice.

Monday’s 10 at 10 Portrait Sketch in Biro

I didn’t get a good likeness to the reference image, but it looks like a human being – so that’s close enough! This is day one of cross hatching with a biro and I’m still figuring out how to do it. But I got some good tonal variation.

I looked back at an old 10 at 10 session and did another biro sketch with tonal shading. At first I left it quite simple, but added a bit of shading under the cheeks, but it looked odd and out of place. But once I’d left it overnight, I went back to it and added more facial shading which helped to blend it in and make it not stand out so much.

The cross-hatching is a bit messy and unorganised, but doing this sketch has made me realise that if you add too much shading to a specific area, you have to keep adding more in order to balance out the sketch. Or that unbalanced area becomes the focal point, when you really don’t want it to be.

I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying using a biro, but I think I need some hatching and cross-hatching practice to streamline the tonal shading process when using a biro.