Portraits At The Pub 32: George & Julan

Portraits At The Pub - George (detail), Fountain Pen and wash, A4 Flat White Sketchbook

I have been really lazy with uploading my work here and over at Instagram – I have been working away, scanning and documenting it, just not posting it. Hence this is the portraits session from 2 weeks ago, with the first pose by Julan and then George for the rest of the session. The Julan portrait was with some new replacement Woody pencil, I lost one and it was nice to check in with Pullingers in Kingston and get reacquainted with them. Funny that this week’s session is mostly kids materials!

Portraits At The Pub - Julan, Woody pencils and wash, A4 Flat White Sketchbook. — Portraits At The Pub – Julan, Woody pencils and wash, A4 Flat White Sketchbook.

After Julan – who was one of the artists stepping in cos I think the model was late (not sure) we had musician George – we seem to draw a lot of musicians, and they seem very good at staying still. So we have more paint stick pieces, again had to order some replacements for that (I wish they were refillable, not happy about the plastic waste). Like the face, not too happy with the background…backgrounds are difficult cos they feel too blank plain white but then I’m rarely happy if I put them in.

Portraits At The Pub - George, Thin Paint Sticks and sgraffito, A4 Flat White Sketchbook. — Portraits At The Pub – George, Thin Paint Sticks and sgraffito, A4 Flat White Sketchbook.

Unusually for me I did a brush pen and wash piece in the large A3 size, with a lot of wash, very wet on wet. I can do pieces like this when it’s warm, cos they don’t take 500 hours to dry! This is using the roTring technical black ink, a nice ink to use with brush pens cos it’s darker and less watery than fountain pen ink, but not cloggy like proper indian ink.

Portraits At The Pub - George, Kuretake brush pen, sgraffito and wash, A3 Canson XL Sketchbook — Portraits At The Pub – George, Kuretake brush pen, sgraffito and wash, A3 Canson XL Sketchbook

Portraits At The Pub - George, Fountain Pen and wash, A4 Flat White Sketchbook — Portraits At The Pub – George, Fountain Pen and wash, A4 Flat White Sketchbook

Portraits At The Pub - George, Thin Paint Sticks and sgraffito, A3 Canson XL Watercolour sketchbook. — Portraits At The Pub – George, Fountain Pen and wash, A4 Flat White Sketchbook

I think the best piece is the fountain pen piece – I think this was towards the end of the session, and yes – side profiles, I seem to be good at those. I had an extra 5 minutes so I did a large paint stick piece as well.