Sometimes I feel like my drawing is similar to composing music. I start drawing just something and hope that it begins its own life.
In this drawing i start from the clouds and doesnt have any idea what it is gonna be at end.
Can you feel the heat? We're dancing at the party on Concrete Street! We never said that this party'd ever come to an end - the sun is setting but no fretting we can do it again!
DAY ONE OF INTENSIVE ART TRAINING! Okay, back up, calm down... So! A little background. I am going into INTENSIVE ART TRAINING because I'm not the best at drawing humans. I want to get better so I can draw people, characters, and find my style. There will be 50 days, and this is day one. This drawing came from an old sketchbook from middle school. I won't post the original drawing (it's...less than ideal...), but you can see this redraw of the character. Thanks for reading this!
This was the best sketchbook I ever owned. It appeared mysteriously and within a year, was gone to the wind. These are the back pages where I was exploring different water and alcohol marker brushes and ballpoint on the amazing vellum-like paper.
New painting commission + original sketch. 16x20 acrylic painting on wood. Check out the time lapse painting on my Instagram or on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXnUO5QHHTQ
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.
This is my first attempt at doodling some trees and it most certainly was not an easy task. I hope as I practice that I will be able to draw more detail and a variety of trees. Special thanks to Jean Garro (@Gentoo201) for the inspiration with her awesome drawings! ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ♥♥ Thanks girl!
Situational awareness is important these days. Pre-pandemic, I sometimes take my doodles to coffee shops during my lunch breaks and relax for half an hour or so by mindlessly scribbling/shading with my Bic pen. People usually leave me alone but this drawing made me realise that not everyone wants to see a man drawing a naked man. A few people took exception to my subjects’ lack of clothing and made their displeasure known by telling me. Suffice to say, I try not to go into coffee shops anymore while working on subject matter that might offend anyone. Bic4 Ballpoint Pen on 9” x 12” Archival paper. Model: Malik_E