sigune | Art: Class Rules (G)

Hee. I can try, can't I, to post a picture a day? I have enough material, though it's not all equally finished - in the sense of having got beyond the sketch stage. I have been dreaming about my Gawain Project a lot, and have done quite a few ballpoint pen sketches.

Somehow I have suddenly started liking the ballpoint pen as a drawing utensil. Maybe it is because I can't erase the ink. Whatever I draw with it is spontaneous and keeps a kind of ... lack of artifice? unstudied-ness? ... something like that. I am also trying - but this is really very difficult for me - to become more fluent in my line work. When I draw, I lack confidence (a lot), and every line consists of small traits that I smoothe out afterwards. That is not how it should be. A good line is firm and bold.

Do you know that I am incapable of drawing the basic of basics - a straight line? How stupid is that?

It has become quite an automatism with me to use small traits. So I am trying to remedy that. With the ballpoint pen, I have also rediscovered my Moleskine booklets. Their lightly tinted paper really didn't give great results with pencils, especially as I never apply a lot of pressure to my pencil when drawing - again, lack of confidence. Ballpoint ink, however, shows up nicely. And guess what: it's scan-friendly too! :D

So nowadays I am not going anywhere without a ballpoint pen and a tiny Moleskine cahier - light, small, and so satisfying :-).

All this is a kind of run-up to the fact that the picture I am posting today is drawn with a ballpoint pen. It's a bit of a departure from the pictures you are used to from me, because - well, I didn't do a pencil sketch, but threw this Snape straight onto the paper. There are a few help lines there that I didn't Photoshop away, and on the whole the picture is just not as clean as when I pencil and ink. But it's very spontaneous, and I'm surprisingly pleased with it. One thing I am not entirely sure about is the combination of blue ballpoint pen inking (the only pen I really like for drawing happens to be blue) and ... watercolour.

Well, I guess you can judge for yourselves :-).

Class Rules (detail)

(I hope the unusually large preview doesn't cause anyone trouble; I just wanted to show some of the detail...)

Class Rules

This picture was done for Aquaviann at deviantART, who won my latest kiriban. She's had to wait very long for this :/. But - I drew the best Snape foot ever for her :D. (His left, our right.)

Aquaviann requested Snape as a young teacher, and said I could use any media that I liked. So I went wild.

Media are ballpoint pen, watercolour and white gouache on the wrong side of a sheet of paper :P. I had started drawing on the proper side of the paper, to be sure, but I made a mistake which, on account of the ballpoint pen, could not be corrected. So I just turned the page over, fully expecting to make another mistake. But I didn't. And then when I started to paint, the watercolour went all funny, probably because of the paper's glue... But despite that, or maybe because of it, I really like how this came out. Sue me.

;-)