Love Charcoal!

I love charcoal! The blacks are so rich and it apples so smoothly, at least the compressed charcoal does. Vine charcoal is great for blocking out a painting, but not for a finished drawing. When compressed charcoal was introduced to me, it was love at first swipe. I was quickly covered in black dust up to the elbow but it was worth it, because I created things like this. Beautiful.

Self Portrait

Alright, whenever someone sees me drawing, for some reason they always ask, "Is that you?" 90 percent of the time the answer is no. I was drawing this picture and my dad walked by saying, "Is that you?" Yes! It's actually supposed to be me this time! Ta-dah!

Ink blot

This inking is the way I typically work with ink when not doing comic art. I like to use brush, a raphael kollinski sable brush. It holds its tip very nicely as well as the ink. After trying many different inks, from sumi to your basic india ink, I found that what works best for me is Dr. Martin's Bombay Black. It is the blackest black I could find that was not an acrylic ink. I found that the acrylic inks are thicker and do not glide as smoothly onto the paper. I have worked wih brush pens, and while I like the convinience (I do use them), I hate the way they look. The tips tend to split and the ink starts looking dried out very quickly. Plus the line variation they can offer is limited and the black is not completely opaque. So, yes, I will use them if I'm feeling lazy, but I will also use a Bic pen at times. But if anyone out there knows of a great brush pen, let me know.

Leather Lady

Here's a pencilled drawing of a leather-clad woman.

Windy

Here's an image I painted in photoshop, usng a soft brush.

Guy Colored

Looking through my posts, I noticed my blog was severely lacking in men, so I colored one up. This is a character from my novel. I drew his last spring with pencil. It is not inked, just gone directly to color.

Face Paint

This was fun and quick. It was a pencil sketch that I darkened and colored in photoshop. The hair was originally ligh brown, but I put an overlay on it of the wrong color and ended up with blue, which I liked better. Yay for happy accidents!