16th March 2018
Working in my recycled book that I turned into a sketchbook, I tried a rough sketch of a figure using watercolour brush pens on a slightly dampened page. I wanted to use only the raw colours in the pens with no watering down or mixing colours, adding depth by using more of the darker colours adding layers of colours. I tried to work quite quickly, not worrying too much about mistakes and I think with the building up of the colours, the ‘wrong’ lines don’t really matter, they just add to the interest.
I then wanted to see what the same figure would look like in a complete contrast to this, using black and white with minimal lines. I blacked out the background using ink and tried to add highlights using a white conté crayon, unfortunately I found the crayon too similar in colour to the page so there wasn’t enough of a contrast and I ended up using graphite pencil to create a bit more tonal variation in the shadows. I like the effect of blacking out the background to create the shape of the image you want to draw, although it doesn’t lend itself to a loose, relaxed piece as mistakes are harder to work into the picture.
