Painting with ink

I've never been fond of drawing. I know that sounds like a strange thing for an artist to say, but to me drawing has always been a means to an end, which is to create either a blueprint or a package for painting, depending on whether I'm painting over the lines or defining the subject with them. For me, it's always about the color. For that reason, I have never really excelled at drawing: I can do a great contour line, but when it comes to shading or cross-hatching or any of the other means of filling in the shadows and solids in a drawing, I am woefully amateur.

For that reason, I have never enjoyed (or participated beyond a few days in) the Inktober challenge, because it's all about the drawing, and the people who excel at that produce such amazing works of art with nothing but a pen that it stymies the rest of us who haven't developed that skill.

But...I recently learned this technique of delineating with a pen and then using a wet paintbrush to paint with the ink I just laid down, and both the challenge of it and the finished look appeal to the painter in me while allowing me to work a little more on my drawing skills. So when Olga Furman decided to do an Inktober for portraitists, I decided I could participate if I could use the ink in my own way.

The first black-and-white reference photo she supplied was that of Sinéad O'Connor, the Irish musician, and you could scarcely find someone with cleaner lines, especially with the minimalist heart-shaped hairline of her shaved head. This is a mature Sinéad, with some gray coming in at the sides and slightly fuller cheeks than in her youth, but still with an amazingly spare jawline and few to no lines in her face. Previously, the faces on which I have used this technique have been older, with scores and wrinkles and blemishes of various kinds that can be highlighted to advantage, so painting this clean example required a certain delicacy, sometimes using only the ink on the brush to draw, rather than putting in lines that don't actually exist. But I think I captured her likeness. I couldn't resist adding a little color, particularly because although her eyes look so dark in the photo, they are in life a clear deep blue that picks up nicely with the aid of a blue jacket.

"Sinéad"—Uniball pen and water in Bee Mixed Media sketchbook, 9x9 inches, with cobalt and ultramarine spot watercolor.

#OlgaInktober2021

OCTOBER

For some reason, the month of October has become THE month to do drawing and painting challenges. First there was Inktober (an ink drawing every day for 31 days), and then everyone else in the world piled on—the watercolorists, the gouache guys, now even the portrait people have decided it might be fun to do a drawing a day.

I have never been a fan of just ink, because I'm all about the color. So this year I have decided to follow not one, not two, but FOUR different prompt lists, jumping between them as I find one more appealing than the rest! Nate and Salli at theydraw.com have decided to furnish three of their own—one for travel, one for food, and one for gardening—to go with their triple-themed website of illustrators' works. And Olga Furman and Sktchy are both doing 31 days of portrait sketches. Just what I like—variety!

Here is the first prompt from #theydrawtober, in the food category. I have a feeling I may be doing quite a few of these, since I love illustrating food and recipes and can think of creative things to do with them. The travel one is kind of daunting, selecting an entire island for each day's prompt, and while you can whittle down Cuba, for example, to a few iconic and symbolic scribbles, it's harder with islands with which you aren't familiar—where the heck are the Whitsunday Islands, and for what are they renowned?! The third list, 31 flowers in 31 days, may also prompt some fun sketches, and when I get tired of all this, it's back to portraits.

Speaking of Cuba...I decided to try a quick and messy one from 31 Islands, 'cause I love all the old American gas guzzler cars they still drive—not good for air quality, but you can't beat them for personality.

Whatever the list, I'm going to try for a piece of work every day in October. Because that, after all, is what the challenge is about!

Food and watercolor

Although I have been focusing on portraits for the past year or so, I still love to do my pen drawings and watercolor them after. Apparently I am not the only one who likes them; I recently posted a little food montage I produced at a sketch-along with Nate and Sally from theydraw.com, and my friend Kirsti posted this:

"I do love your portraits, but boy do I love your pen and watercolor sketches, especially when they involve food! More, please!!!

So, partially to gratify Kirsti and partially because I wasn't in the mood for faces today, and also because I just made this and it was so SO good, here is a recipe for Magic Eggplant Casserole, done in my contour-drawing-and-watercolor style, and in proper format to get uploaded to theydrawandcook.com as well! (They have everybody do their illustrations in a format so that they will make a double spread in a book, and then they periodically collect some of the submissions and publish one.)

Because I did this "real size" instead of scaling up, I didn't manage to put all the detail into the "products" (canned goods etc.) that I normally would; but I also didn't feel like doing complicated math OR piecing things together in Photoshop today.

"Magic Eggplant Casserole"—pencil, Uniball pen, watercolors, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 16.5x6.25 inches.

I wish I had broken the border with the casserole dish, like I did with the carrots and the pasta lid—it would have been more consistent. Also, I wish I had put in a block of cheese instead of that grater, but oh well.

Note: I don't know why this is specifically eggplant casserole, since it has equal parts of many vegetables in it, but I copied it approximately from a dish they used to serve at the Good Earth Restaurant, now defunct, and that's what they called theirs. This can even make a fun party dish—you can divide it up into individual ramekins, top it with some really good cheese before baking, and then serve it with a small dollop of sour cream on top for fanciness.

Also, you don't have to include all these veg—sometimes I make it without the carrots and potatoes. And sometimes I add other stuff too, like green beans or individual pearl onions, or small chunks of sweet potato. It's quite versatile. And it's also good served up over brown rice.

Wet and wild(er)

I've been saving this reference photo for a while, and today she seemed the perfect subject to try out the new, wet-brush loose technique I learned in the lesson on Tuesday, so I sketched her out in pencil and went to town. It could still be looser in some respects, and maybe more colorful and less blended as well, but I'm pretty pleased. That great cloud of hair was challenging, but I just kept painting until it looked sorta right. I couldn't resist using my rigger brush to do the lace on her shirt, although she got purple instead of the black she was wearing, just to provide yet more interest.

"Alessandra"—pencil and Paul Jackson watercolors

on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches. 

A new school

I am so often annoyed by all the advertising crap that pops up in my Facebook feed, most of it directly related to some random remark I made that results in my being bombarded with weight loss formulas or expensive pajamas or whatever. But an ad for Etchr Studio art school displayed a watercolor so enticing that I went to their website and ended up registering for three mini workshops. And what they interpret as a mini workshop seems pretty generous to me: For six dollars, I was treated to a 90-minute stroke-by-stroke narrative by the artist (Fiona Di Pinto, a lovely Italian lady) on how she paints a portrait, and was able, thanks to the advance delivery of the reference photo for me to draw, to follow along and try it for myself.

I have been painting portraits in both watercolor and acrylics for a while now, but the looseness to which I aspire graces me only infrequently; I more often than not end up over-blending and coming up with something that is blander and less risky than I would like. But I think that going along with this as Fiona painted it, in the order and with the colors she used, is going to have an effect on future work; additionally, she gave a few small tips that were so simple but so revelatory that I can't believe I never figured them out for myself.

We painted this entire thing, except for the detail work (which was done with a fine rigger brush) with a Silver Black Velvet #12, a brush that holds a lot of water. Previous to this I have avoided using it for much of anything but background washes, preferring the control of my Escoda Prado synthetic brushes, which maintain a perfect point and don't overwhelm you with wetness. But after this experience, I'm game to keep on with the looser, wetter brush to see if I can improve and gravitate towards the spontaneous feel that I'm seeking.

"Fiona"—pencil and watercolor on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 9x12 inches.

I lost the plot on this one a bit on the eyes and also on the nose, simply because I'm not used to having to wait so long for things to dry before going back into them; I had to lift the eyes a couple of times and rework them, so they became a little dark and teary; and I got carried away with the shadow on the side of the nose and overwhelmed it a bit. But even with those caveats, I am so pleased with what I learned in this workshop! And in three days' time the recording of it will be delivered to my inbox for me to keep, so I can even go back and review.

Etchr is my new favorite school! They have master classes that are more expensive, but even then the price range is so reasonable that I wouldn't hesitate to sign up. But for now, I have two more six-dollar experiences coming up in the next 30 days, about which I will report back!

LFI 37...sort of

Week 37 of Let's Face It was a black/white/gray oil painting. I loved the reference photo, but I don't possess any oil paints, and although I'd like to learn to do that sometime, I'd rather wait to buy them until I will be using them regularly or even exclusively. So I decided I would just do a watercolor of the beautiful subject.

The thing is, though, that I loved the black and white. So I went back to a technique I have only done a couple of times before ("Smoker" and "Kurt Vonnegut") wherein you draw with a Uniball and then, before the ink dries and becomes waterproof, you use a paintbrush loaded only with water to move the ink around and create the lights and darks and shadows.

It makes for a little less stark image in terms of contrast, because the only way to get the darks super dark by doing this is to keep scribbling with ink and then moving it around before it can dry, and it's all too easy to mess that up and have some unlovely marks become permanent. So the lights and darks are more subtle here, especially regarding her black hair and in the darkest shadows. Her tank top was also black, but I chose to just suggest it with the outlines and a little shadow around the detailed edges, leaving the center pristine.

After I was done, I couldn't resist putting some pink into the rose, and echoed a tiny bit of it under her cheekbone; and then I inked in the border, and then I decided that some background color would really make the figure pop.

I'm pretty pleased with this, especially because I drew it freehand while the teacher used a grid! Some of the angles are not quite right, but all in all it's a pretty faithful reproduction of the model's stance.

"Blush Rose"—pencil, Uniball pen, water, Paul Jackson watercolors on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress paper, a little smaller than 9x12 inches.

#theydrawalong

 Got an inadvertently early start this morning—got up at 8:25, fed the cat, then checked my email and saw that the latest draw-along session with Nate and Salli had just started (in New York, so they start at 11:30 their time), so I jumped on. This session featured guest artist Jennifer Orkin Lewis, aka August Wren. She mostly works in gouache, which we have established is NOT my thing, so I played along in my familiar media of Uniball pen followed by some watercolor. She laid out an array of semi-random objects, so I picked some that could maybe go together in a dish if I were cooking, and did this little sketch, throwing in a couple of the flowers for decor and the fig because figs! Nothing is quite proportionately to size, but...?

These draw-along sessions are fun and helpful, in that they get you to draw and paint quickly, without thinking too much. And at 8:30 in the morning, who can think anyway?

#theydrawalong #theydrawlearnalong #theydrawandcook