July Sketch A Day Faves

This month I fully embraced spreading sketches out over a few days instead of pressuring myself to churn a new one out per day. In the months before I could feel stress building up over trying to produce a different sketch everyday and I think it was the main reason why I've increasingly been missing days.

With that in mind there are less favourites this month but only because more time was put into them. The main materials I used in July were promarkers and graphite pencil with coloured pencil thrown in ocassionally. Here are the best from July!

I had avoided doing eye drawings partly because if I let myself I would do them all the time but mainly because Instagram is full of them and they have begun to feel slightly cliché (if that's the right word). But with Lindsay Lohan's birthday passing (an old fave) I couldn't risk drawing her beautiful eyes. I think it's the eyelashes and grey combination that I love.

Done over the course of many days, this was the follow up piece to my diner marker drawing which I love mainly for the birdseye view. At the risk of sounding creepy I like the feeling of being a fly on the wall witnessing candid day to day moments and even though there are no faces you can get a feeling of mood from the setting and colours. The drawing feels comfortable and homey to me, probably because of the clutter and home baking.

Legally Blonde turned 15 and I wanted to commemorate it by drawing from my favourite scene in the movie. The original plan was to do five expressions but in the end I just stuck with these three and really love the finished sketches! With each one I managed to a get a little quicker so who knows how fast I could have been by the fifth face. Another time maybe. This drawing led onto my Princess Diaries drawing later in the month. I definitely want to continue doing facial expression work. 

I went on a spree of drawing colourful insects when I was stressed about producing larger scaled detailed work but these studies managed to calm me down with there simple shapes and fun use of colour. Plus I got to use my white gel pen for highlights which is one of favourite things to do. 

Fun fact - I've never seen the entirety of the Wizard of Oz, only clips here and there, so there is really no good reason why this drawing came to be but I love it all the same. I was thinking about all the old Hollywood actresses I loved and drew in June and after watching a documentary run down of the best hollywood musicals it got me thinking about Judy Garland and how I knew of her but yet hadn't seen any of her work. I so I found an image of these ruby slippers and decided to draw them. I really like how the reflection on the floor turned out along with the green background. 

I went full out on this one! I saw that you could do a layering technique of promarkers then coloured pencils and wanted to try it out and so chose Aly Michalka as my subject. Since I was able to put down base colours with promarkers, almost like an underpainting, it allowed me to be quicker with the coloured pencils which I can find annoying if I spend too much time with them, especially on hair. Pretty sure it's the first full portrait I have finished this year and I'd say it is one of my best ones technically all year. Helps that Aly is stunning as well. I've managed to incorporate markers, pencils and facial expression all in the one. Proud of this one. 

Finally got to see Finding Dory and I loved it some much. So glad Pixar are back on top form again! Baby Dory is the cutest thing ever so I had to draw her! A fun promarker drawing, especially with blending all the blues.

And my final favourite is a drawing of an old family photograph of me and my cousin that my dad had pestered me to do. I hadn't actually see the photograph before which is always nice. When I finally got round to drawing it I remembered how much I love drawing familiar faces. I might actually try and dig up more photographs and draw them. I'm bias but I think my childhood photos are the best. But doesn't everyone think that of there own.  

My goals for next month are to possibly start a series of illustrations for my nephew and his new brother that will be arriving in September, pretty close to his own birthday. But we shall see. On top of that I have been inching to decorate my room with a wall mural so I want to design something pretty, possibly floral. I also maybe wanted to try and get to grips with charcoal or pastel. That's a big maybe though. Not sure if a messy person and a messy medium should work together. I also keep forgetting that I have canvas boards to use so I need to start coming up with ideas. Notice how these posts are mostly reminders for myself. Anyway...

August... here we go!

Hazel, xoxo

My Experience with Winsor and Newton Promarkers

I have now fully embraced markers. They are so fun and easy to use plus I get the same vibrant colours without having to organise an elaborate set up like I would with paints. I really am quite lazy when I think about setting up supplies. I find it can discourage me from starting to draw or paint. So the simpler, the better. 

My first foray into Promarkers was back at the start of the year, with the Letraset brand - in fact I have a blog post about it here on this blog. Within the last month or so I have slowly been buying more to expand my colour choice. As I have continued to buy them though there seems to have been a change over with the Promarkers going from Letraset to Winsor and Newton. The colours are the same but I do feel like the Winsor and Newton ones are slightly better in regards to blending.

The third row is Winsor and Newton Promarkers and the lines under the row are the Letraset Promarkers. As you can see the colours are pretty much the same (apart from the yellow but only because I tried to blend with it and it picked up the other colour). From this colour selection I've managed to make a variation of colours. My only annoyance is with the lack of variation in skintones but my using the browns and greys from the others sets I can just about manage a darker range of skintones. However it would have been a lot better if the skintones came in a pack of 12 to insure a better diversity of colour.

While shopping I also bought Marker paper which to my surprise is a lot thinner that I though it would be. When I ordered it on Cass Art I didn't look at the thickness of the paper assuming it would be quite sturdy since all the paper I had used with markers so far all had bleeding. So when I saw the paper was quite flimsy, resembling grease proof paper or tracing paper, I was taken aback (70gsm to be accurate). But there definitely isn't any bleed through which is amazing even though you can see the drawing on both sides of the paper. For now it is great for sketching however I think I might look for some alternatives for higher quality work just so it is easier to store without tearing or creasing.

How the drawings look from the back of the paper.

I found this Baylee Jae video about the subject and thought it might be helpful to those looking for marker appropriate paper like me.

I have looked into other brands of markers, Copic and so on, but I find the Promarkers do the job just fine without putting a hole in my purse. I am curious to test them though just see what the hype is all about. Until I win the lottery though I think I'll live without having used them. Pigment Markers are another type I'm interested in due to how easy it looks to blend them, especially with the white pen. Far superior to the waste of time blender that comes with the larger packs of Promarkers. They look like a mixture of pen and paint.

I see myself using markers for a while. The novelty hasn't wore off yet. The only thing that concerns me about them is how fast they might fade but until I see that for myself I'll continue using them.

Hazel, xoxo   

Promarkers sketch attempts

I recently went into Cass Art and saw a set of 12 Letraset promarkers for under £10 and snatched them up. I have been following a lot of illustrators on Instagram who use markers and it made me curious about them so I opted for Promarkers as they are definitely the more affordable option compared to other brands, such as Copic.

Unfortunately what I had envisioned was being able to take to markers like a duck to water but as with anything a little practice is needed. The colour pay off is great but I thought I would be able to layer these to build up the colour. It wasn't quite what I had envisioned. It might be to do with the fact that they are of the Letraset brand but I'll soon find out since I've ordered some Winsor and Newton skin tone promarkers to try out.

In the meantime here are a couple of my trial and error sketches. Note to self : i'll probably need to purchase thicker paper to stop the ink bleeding.