Drawing Started: Sharisse Sitting

I’ve started a new drawing using the clay coated paper scratchboard I made in the video I posted last time. This is from an photo of mine that I took of my friend, Sharisse, sitting on the floor of her apartment. The grey tone is a wash of diluted sumi ink. I lightly outlined the figure on the paper with a grey pastel pencil to get her placed the way I wanted, and used the box cutter blade to roughly lighten the brightest areas. I then scratched over that with a push pin. It’s still a little rough on the modeling of her figure, but I’ll refine that later as I move on to the blanket and background areas. I’ll make a last pass on the darks at the end; although, I rather like it without that right now. We’ll see what it looks like when I get to that point.

New Drawing: Henry

I wanted to show a couple steps in the process I followed to create a new drawing of my friend, Henry. The surface is a Permastone tile I made a little differently than usual. Instead of pouring it into a mold, I decided to paint several thin coats on a 9 x 12″ piece of 1/8″ plywood to build up the surface much like the process of making traditional gesso panels. This worked okay, except the end result gave me some brush marks that I had to sand, and the surface wasn’t as smooth as when I pour into mold on glass. A little more effort involved, but it came out okay.

Next I wanted to tone the surface with a wash of ink. I poured on some black acrylic ink and then wiped it down with a paper towel. This gave me an irregular texture mostly due to the sanded surface, but that’s what I was after. To transfer the pencil line drawing of my photo to this surface, I used my “cell animation” technique of taping the paper to the top of the board and flipping the paper up and down to see where to scratch the lines in the ink. It was then ready to start drawing the head.

The drawing was made using some new pens I wanted to try out. They’re a box of 8 pens I found on Amazon that use acrylic paint. It worked well, but there’s not any variation in the lines they make. Also, for this scratching technique, I have to wait a few more minutes for the paint to dry compared to using ink . I also got a set of white pens that I’ll try out on another drawing to draw the white lines instead of scratching them.

How I Drew “Olivia”

I thought I would show a series of pictures of how I drew a recent work of a photo of mine that I took of my friend, Olivia.

I started with a sheet of 300# watercolor paper, about 11.5 x 16″, that was sprayed with frosted glass resin. To coat this with a wash of Sumi ink I used a sponge, and then wiped it down with a paper towel to give it a light grey tone with some texture. I had sketched an outline of my photo to scale on some copy paper that I used to transfer this drawing to the watercolor sheet. I did this by clipping the drawing to the sheet, and flipped the drawing back and forth to see where to make the lines on the sheet using an ink pen. I could have transferred the drawing (as I sometimes do) by rubbing some charcoal on the back, but doing it this way is quicker, saving the time of tracing over the drawing, and cleaning up the charcoal that I just have to erase later. I set the photo for reference on my little digital display frame, and then applied a darker wash for the mid-tone and darkest areas. I then started shading in the lines with a Micron pen. The frosted glass doesn’t work quite as well as some of the other surfaces I draw on, but well enough to lighten up some lines and clean things up easily.

New Drawing: Don’t Call Me Billy

This is a drawing of a neighbor’s son drawn from a photo of mine. The first thing he said to me when we met was “Don’t call me Billy. My name is William.” Okay, “William” it is.

This drawing follows the test sample I made in the last post using frosted glass spray on paper. Here I sprayed 3 costs on a sheet of white mat board. The ink worked well. I first put down a diluted wash, and you can see the rough texture made as it was applied to the frosted surface. The line drawing was done using a Prismacolor Fine Line Marker (01), I was able to get a light shading effect on this surface just by dragging it across the surface by the weight of the pen. I didn’t do too much scratching away; only in the highlight areas, and for a little cleaning up of lines.

New Drawing: Old Woman by Aronson

Thus drawing is based on a photo I found online of a bust sculpture made by Naoum Aronson of an old woman. I liked the shadows on her face created by the bronze surface. my choice for a drawing surface was a white plaster tile that I had in a small broken chunk (6×9″) which I thought would work well with the ink, allowing me to scratch away the highlight areas. I toned the surface with a diluted wash of Sumi ink, and the lines are drawn with a Micron pen.

Drawing Final: Guitar in the Park

This is the final state of the drawing, not accounting for some minor clean up I still need to do. I darkened the bushes behind his leg some, too, so it would be easier to see the leg. I’ll let it sit for a few days to see if there’s more to be done.

Drawing Update 3: Guitar in the Park

Here’s the latest state of the drawing. I’ve gotten more of the figures drawn in and started on the back wall. I very loosely scribbled in some lines on the back wall to get a random texture, and now I’m scratching away more regular lines.

Drawing Update 2: Guitar in the Park

Slowly plodding along on the drawing. This is the first time I’ve worked with Claybord in this manner. Before, I would cover an area in ink, and scrape away to the white. Here I’m using it more like a regular drawing, and it’s working, but very slowly.

One effect I’m noticing is that because its a non-absorbent surface, when the wet lines of ink intersect the ink will flow across the area, sort of like the way watercolor stains. This causes the lines to get lighter in some places as the ink puddles. I then have to draw back over the area again, slowing things down. Also, I was hoping the undertone staining I had done with thin oil paint would not scratch away so easily. That’s forcing me to go back and forth with drawing, scratching, and then reapplying the tone. This new tone of oil color is thinned with mineral spirits so it won’t disturb the ink.

I’m not sure I’ll get this finished in time for entry into the art show I was planning to apply for at the end of the month, but I’ll keep at it anyway.