"A happy little planet but these aliens have landed and seem to be taking people away." A watercolored fountain pen drawing in my Moleskine sketchbook.
BIC ballpoint stick pen drawing on Richeson bulk drawing paper. This started as a contour drawing and just got squiggly (not the original intent). This was clipped to my board for weeks and I would add a few squiggles from time to time when I wanted to make marks, but didn't have inspiration. It's just a bit under 15 inches (12x18 inch paper) and is probably about 25 hours of making little lines and squiggles. The reference was a Dreamstime royalty-free photo.
Bic4 Ballpoint Pen, Sanrio Novelty 10 Colour Ballpoint Pen on Archival 8.5" x 11" paper.
Inspired by Charles Dana Gibson’s “Woman: The Eternal Question” (supposedly a drawing of his muse Evelyn Nesbit). I’ve always loved Gibson’s loose, graphical penwork. Working hard to be more ‘loose’ with my pen drawings.
Model: Meadhbh (Maeve)
The clutter on my drawing table.. I tend to use pencils the most, with pens a close second and sometimes brushes. This is the neat look---when everything is put away in its box. More often than not, they are a bit more scattered on the surface. Micron pen drawing.
Currently exploring image making with fountain pens: immediate mark making, no pencil, no eraser. I'm enjoying the discovery process and embracing the stray mark made with semi-blind contour and continuous line drawings.
Taken me a while to finish this one - not feeling very focused lately. Also, I restricted myself to using Bic’s yellow ink, which is way more vibrant than the cheap 10-colour ink click pens that I usually use.
I was looking at what Pixabay might offer as inspiration, and found this fish. Perfect for a ballpoint pen drawing. The incompleted drawing in the second photo was taken before the final "glaze" of little scribbles of turquoise pen across almost the whole surface. It was a happy accident that made for a shimmery, iridescent fishy quality.
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.
