october sketch crawl

Today is the day chosen for October's sketch crawl day. Alas, it is too cold to sketch outside, so I set up a still life in the living room. The elements that I put in the still life were a vase, a stuffed bear, a jar of honey, and a leaf.

First, I started by doing a freehand sketch of the vase, trying, but not succeeding in making both sides identical. That does not bother me because making both sides identical with a freehand sketch is a difficult task! Fortunately, there are ways of compensating for that.

This is how I compensated: I got out a sheet of onion skin paper. I used onion skin because I don't have any tracing paper. I chose the side of the vase that I liked the best and traced it. Then I flipped the onion skin over and I placed it on the other side of the vase. When you draw directly over the line that you have already made, applying some pressure to the line, the graphite from the pencil will make an impression on the sketch paper. When you take the onion skin paper away, you can see exactly how inaccurate your original sketch was. Simply erase the original lines and reinforce the new line.

I used the same technique as above to get both handles on the vase. Then I added the bear, erasing lines from the vase that were no longer needed because the bear was sitting in front of the vase.

Here is the completed sketch, with all of my planned elements included. At this point, the only drawing supplies you need are simple ones. I used a number 2 pencil, a Pink Pearl eraser, and a piece of onion skin paper.

Because I have decided to use pen and ink as my medium, I begin inking in my drawing, starting with the bear. For this project, I am using Faber-Castell PITT artist pens. I really like these pens for drawing. They come in a variety of widths, so that I can get anything from a fine line to a almost paintbrush-like effect. At this point, I have used two pens: an F for the lines and an SB for the thicker lines and for the bear's hair.

This is the completed drawing. I have used two additional pens: an M for slightly thicker lines and an XS for very narrow lines (the writing on the honey jar). I also added shading, which gives some idea of the light source. I used the SB pen for the shading. The drawing technique that I used for shading, was "stippling," which basically means that I made lots of dots.

So that's today's sketch crawl. I hope that you enjoyed watching the process of making a pen and ink drawing as much as I enjoyed making the picture.