Finally finished! This project took many long hours (about 8-9) and reduced my brand new 6B pencil to nothing but a tiny stub... “Black Gold” is done in graphite on 80 lb drawing paper. If you are interested in prints please contact me via my website.
I've been so impressed with the ball point pen art that I have seen on this site, that I decided to give it a try. This is a Betta fish (Siamese fighting fish) done in red, blue, and purple ball point pens. Obviously, I have much to learn....but it was great fun and I have ordered some more colors since I plan on experimenting more. I've enclosed a photo of the work in progress and the various reference photos I used. The colors are more true to the final scan than in the flash photo of my drawing table.
More ballpoint pen experiments. This was trying to "blend" colors, using ball point pens in a similar way to colored pencils. I found Layering evenly to be pretty difficult, esp with the pens blotching and very very limited burnishing. The interesting thing is that the paper doesn't seem to get "tired" the way it does with pencils. This is just cheap printer card stock.
I was on the fence of whether or not I was going to make a piece for the prompt, but I'm glad I did. I tested out some watercolor pens I had recently gotten (I definitely have to practice with them a bit more). I didn't really have a plan for this, and it was a bit fun to do something so spontaneously.