As I have mentioned (frequently) I am in a betwixt and between kind of place at the moment, and lacking inspiration and the ability to find any sort of flow state, so while my son is still here and it’s often too stuffy for me to concentrate and too hot to paint I have set myself a little challenge to give me some focus.
One of my favourite things to do is draw while I watch a film or series, although it has to be something familiar to me otherwise I get too engrossed. If you have seen any of my sketchbook tours, you’ll see I doodle faces and sometimes more comprehensive thumbnails from whatever I’m watching. Most of the time I literally remember a look or face and draw what I remember without having to pause, but every so often I will take a frame of a particular facial expression or features and spend a minute or so trying to capture it.
The advantage of this form of drawing is that the camera angle presents good or at least interesting lighting, and naturally everyone on screen is wonderfully telegenic, providing good fodder for a sketchbook. With this in mind, I christened a new sketchbook with a page of pen and ink faces, and I was moving over from blue-black to sepia ink in my Parker fountain pen which gave a nice verdigris-toned intensity.
I like having opportunities to link the faces together if I can. Here are some faces from Death on the Nile:
I use a waterbrush to add some texture. I have some Pilot calligraphy pens and they are actually fantastic as the side of the nib is beautifully sharp and crisp, and the flat edge fills evenly and quickly, and makes lovely quiff shapes. I really like these drawings:
I’ve worked out that with my average coverage I will complete over 900 faces in this sketchbook of 32 sheets/64 pages so I have decided to aim for 1000 just to add a little piquancy. I have already done 211 and I’m really enjoying it.
I’ve given myself until the end of August to complete this challenge, which means I will have finished it in about 6 weeks. Years ago I joined in the #OneWeek100People challenge initiated by Citizen Sketcher so I guess it’s not much more than that sort of pace.
Do you do any drawing challenges? Or draw from the telly?
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