Holidays in Ink Week 3

 

The Holidays in Ink Challenge certainly got me out of my comfort zone this week. I had some new art adventures, discovered more about what inspires me, and had some flops and successes. Leave me a comment and let me know how it's going for you too! If you've posted your sketches somewhere, feel free to leave a link there too. If you haven't started this challenge yet, but would like to, you can read all about it and get the prompt lists (which are totally optional) at this link.

Day 7 involved a Process Prompt I knew I would put off forever if I could: Blind Contour drawing! But I was determined to tackle it. I had beautiful, fresh flowers to inspire me for the Flowers subject prompt, so that helped ease the pain. I did the sketch with a red Bic Cristal Xtra-Bold 1.6mm ballpoint pen (Amazon Affiliate Link), and then splashed some watercolor over it with a loose approach. (Image below.) Starting with the pen in the upper left hand corner and working across the page helped me guess where I was. I also tried to keep my hand still and work around a center point of the flower, then shift my hand over for the next bloom. I confess, I did peek just a few times to be sure I was filling the page! I don't think I've done blind contours since a figure drawing class 20 years ago, and it was more fun than I thought it would be. The inaccuracies gave me some interesting and unexpected shapes to work with. I like the red lines poking through the watercolor. These Bic Cristal pens are great for sketching, with their very wide ballpoints yielding lots of variation when wanted, and intense colors. At under $5 for a set of 24, the price is hard to beat for some favorite art tools during this challenge!

To the right of that sketch is one of my three pages of black/white/gray Notan sketches from Day 8, using Turner painting references to fulfill the Master Copy subject prompt from the list. The process prompt is #5 -- black  ink on white paper, blocking in big shapes and patterns. I decided to add a gray value as well. I'd selected a bunch of Turner paintings the night before, and I was so captivated by the way he grouped his values and used the shapes compositionally, that I did a couple more pages of them. (Those additional ones are at the top of this post.) 

The black/gray/white sketches were done using three of the Golden High Flow paints in this set (Amazon Affiliate link). I love this "Drawing Set" because it contains not only Black, White, and Neutral Gray, but also three sparkly iridescents (gold, silver and copper), red-yellow-blue primaries, and the stunning Teal. It's not just a good set for drawing with acrylic ink, but also for calligraphy, dip pens, color mixing, and card-making. I've had to refill these convenient, small bottles many times from larger ones; they're among the colors I use the most. They are more concentrated than what other companies call "acrylic ink". I'd rather have these and water them down if needed, since it's always better to have more pigment than not enough.  

For Day 9, I took on the "Boats" subject prompt with my own reference images, and the "Ballpoint Pens with Two or More Colors" process prompt. I used the Bic Cristal pens that I linked to in the flower sketch a few paragraphs above. I'm used to being able to mass in dark shapes with paint, so having to rely on linework for that job was a challenge for me.  

Long time viewers of this blog know that I love playing with lettering. For quite some time, I've wanted to create a font to use with brush pens, which is why I made a process prompt for headline lettering. The way we write in our sketchbooks becomes an important component of our page design. I went through pages and pages of scrap paper, and this is where I ended up. Some of these letters will probably get tweaked a bit in future versions. My goal was to have something I could quickly pop into a sketch, that was brush pen friendly, versatile (able to accept shadowing, fills, etc.) attractive, and legible. I'm pretty happy with this one, and I'll keep test driving it on some of my pages during this challenge. For the lettering, I used a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (Amazon Affiliate Link) for the black, and an Arteza Real Brush Pen (Amazon Affiliate link) for the red. The small italic writing on the lower right and bottom was done with a Pilot Plumix italic fountain pen (Amazon link).

I left a full page spread at the beginning of my sketchbook to create a title page. On Day 11, I finally had an idea for it. I used the Manikin and Imagination subject prompts, and the Calligraphy process prompt #10 (incorporating lettering/calligraphy into your sketch) to fill the pages with holiday whimsy.

I don't do "whimsical" often, nor imaginative sketching, so I was surprised by how much fun I had creating this page spread. I began with pencil and marker sketches on scrap paper, and let the ideas evolve until I had something I felt could work.  I ended up doing the final version mostly with red and green Arteza Real Brush Pens and the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen (all of which I linked to in the previous lettering sketch above). While I wasn't thrilled with the Arteza Real Brush Pens for blended color/value work in a previous review I posted, I really enjoyed sketching with them here for lettering, brushy lines and color blocks.

I did several drip painting portraits on Day 12, using Golden Tar Gel (Amazon Affiliate link) and some fluid acrylics to color it. Day 13 yielded practice in Copperplate style calligraphy and flourishes. Those pages aren't photographed yet; it's hard to find time for it all. I'm sure you can relate! I'll try to show them at a later date, or maybe on a video flip-through of the book when I'm finished with the challenge.

So, what's up for Week 3? I'm thinking of:

• Dancers/Athletes (Subject #6), Five Minute Sketches (Process #20)
• Facial Features (Subject #7), 3 Colors/Values (Process #12)
• Figures (Subject #8), (Not sure which Process prompt yet)
• Nocturne (Subject #22), Blue and Orange (Process #8)
• Stairs/Steps (Subject #34), One Reference in Three Ways (Process # 40)
• And hopefully a couple of others, if I can do more than five days.

What are your plans?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: This post may contain Amazon Affiliate links, which provide a small commission to me should you decide to purchase something, at no additional cost to you.