2023, Ballpoint pen on 5” x 8” acid free Moleskine sketchbook paper, Adobe Photoshop. First sketchbook drawing of 2024! Based on a photo of a model in a makeup company advert.
I’m often asked about my Bic pen drawings and how I do them. It starts with a good foundational drawing, the ballpoint pen part is just trying to colour within the lines. I try to do my best to explain the process, but the best way to show my progress is by posting my efforts to master pen drawings over the span of 3 or so years. I have been doodling/drawing with ballpoint pens as far back as I can remember - they were cheap, readily available and always lying around the house. It wasn’t until I was bored during a particularly long team meeting-conference call (around 2016-17) that I started to think about the possibilities of ballpoint pens as serious portrait illustration tools. My first experiments with full colour ink portrait drawings were rather crude, but that’s the point of learning new techniques—as long as the curiosity and the love of drawing is there, you can transfer that skill and passion into any medium. Remember, the most exquisite drawings and paintings you see didn’t materialise fully formed, they started out as failed experiments. Failure after failure after failure. It’s important to remember this when you get discouraged (I've failed spectacularly over the years). The only difference between the accomplished artist and the beginner is hundreds of hours of practice. Talent can only get you so far. It’s the hard work that you do behind the scenes that makes your work look effortless. Keep doodling. Keep learning. Stay curious.
I look at way too many carefully decorated spaces on Pinterest, so I painted one of them and then opened up the room to nature. Also a way to experiment with "gouache painting" in Adobe Fresco.
Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
The first several weeks of a new novel, Oates has said, are particularly difficult and demoralizing: “Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor.”
From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
#dailyrituals #inktober #JoyceCarolOates @masoncurrey
While doodling, I was thinking of my characters Dipsy Diddle, Peggy Bark, Chubbsly and Markley and imagined another dog character to the group. Ladies, gents and cartoon lovers alike. Meet Twizzle "Twizzy" the Basset Blood Hound.
"English as She is Spoke" is a delightful example of incompetence and bad judgement. Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolina set out to write a Portuguese-English phrasebook. The only problem was that they didn't speak any English. They did know some French and armed with French-English phrasebook, dictionaries and enthusiasm they brought forth this book. Mark Twain was an early admirer of this book. "Nobody can add to the absurdity of this book, nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand alone: its immortality is secure."
Streetstyle from Helsinki Finland. You know the Moomin tales by Tove Jansson. The friend of Moomin is Snufkin. A wanderer that has all the belongings with him. This fellow feels like real life Snufkin.
