#mydrawingthoughts

All episodes of the series: (X)

Well, reviewing old charcoal works made me want to try it again... and classic portrait is kinda safe choice for warm-up (not to mention that for me it’s been always very comforting genre - no need to think and plan too much, just follow the light (or shapes and shadows, if you like it this way). Although my strong preference is vine sticks (which allow to take full advantage of the tool, but is also more messy than the alternatives), I chose pencils this time for the sketchbook format. Hope it becomes more than warm-up sketch, but will see!

(This paper-doll-John project is gonna be fun! ✏🖌✒)

Soundtrack: Crawling Back by Roy Orbison (X)

I bought some new tools - Sakura KOI brush pens - from my last trip (when in foreign cities, I’m used to visit store of art materials and find some stuff I haven’t tried before). So this is result. I’m not very impressed, I must say - the tones are kinda strange (like skin tones are very intensive pinks and yellows) and they don’t blend into each other naturally, unlike those I’m used to use (copic, touch and promarkers), but need specific blender pen. Very disappointing limitation, and I found it so annoying that couldn’t complete the picture with those new pens only, but gave up somewhere in the middle and switched to old ones. 

I can try technical approach - to distance myself from the object, rip the picture apart (figuratively) and focus on separate parts with blankened mind… Usually it helps to overcome the block, only needs some self dicipline and patience (which I also seem lacking lately). And it's clearly less fun than the inspirational method.✏🎨😾 .

Also I ordered some nice textured papers to make the calendar look more fancy, but totally failed in this aspect - the papers I liked most happened be too thick for my printer (at least I can use them for drawing), some packages included not enough sheets for test pages and final printing both and some haven’t arrived yet 😕(I see post offices are still recovering from the Christmas mess).

More ink pen tests on rough paper. They really look like traditional printing! It’s really intriguing and makes me wanna try the same images in some actual printmaking technique too, I should even have all the materials somewhere, except the printing press (but I know place where I can go to use one for a small fee)...