Katie was the model at Portraits At The Pub nearly two weeks ago – lack of sunshine and missing the brief window when it wasn’t raining meant I kept not being able to post these portraits because I needed a photo of the A3 piece. Eventually I did this after last week’s Canela, so I’m going to post both of these shortly. Unlike the Canela session which is really interesting, I struggled with this one. The two ink pieces do look like her – and vaguely in proportion too, although another piece got canned.
These first two portraits were using a new pad – a really cheap but good pad from Daler Rowney. Daler make a Graduate student range, which is a top tip for those wanting to save some money as it’s usually pretty good (their brushes I use a lot for larger works). I didn’t realise they even make a 240gsm mixed media sketchpad which you can sometimes get in a budget form with two pads with no covers.
Currently it’s £5 for 2x 20 page pads at The Works (and no they aren’t paying me – that’s not even an affiliate link. Yes I am now using some affiliate links to help with income if anyone purchases something. Feel free to help out but I am totally fine with people not doing so because of certain companies or want to buy local or elsewhere cheaper. Keep in mind I am 100% independent and have zero relationship with any of these companies).
And the pad is very good, very white. It’s probably not as good as Daler’s much more expensive 250gsm Optima which is also in the ‘to try’ stack – but as cheap mixed media paper it is far better than the dreadful DoCrafts stuff I’ve used before (also sold at The Works so make sure you get the good stuff – the DoCrafts pads are more like that weird shiny toilet paper you got at school).
It took ink and wash fine, with some buckling – which is to be expected at that paper width. Only downside is it really is just a pad with a soft cover and the pages are loosely attached, so it won’t take any battering in a bag or rain. So it’s something I am keeping purely for portraits as it’s much easier to scan than my O-ring books.
I did one portrait in fountain pen and wash in the new pad, as is now traditional, and a Kuretake brush pen piece (not sure if it was my DT140-13C (which I modded to have the DT140-50‘s sable tip cos back then pre-Brexit VAT nightmare it was FAR cheaper to do that than buy a Kuretake DT140-50 – they are all expensive now!), or the cheaper Kuretake #8 DP150-8B.
Those are all cartridge brush pens, like a posher and better version of the Pentel Brush Pen – I use them with roTring ink as eyedropper pens. You can get cheaper Kuretake pens but they are not refillable and thus very bad for the environment – and hacking non-refillable pens is always a fraught thing when they aren’t designed for it.
Please don’t buy single-use plastic pens, people! (unless you intend to refill them). My campaign to get them banned unless refillable goes on. I would usually say ‘if I was P.M…’, but given recent events that might be a possibility at the current rate of churn for that role.
Anyway the brush pen painting is very dynamic – this looks a lot more like Katie, although the first piece has elements of her too.
I have been attempting to use watercolour more in my portraits again since the successes of Canela, and unusually this time I had access to a table, so I did a big A3 piece. At the time it didn’t look right – I made her abdomen too small – so you’re getting two details and not the full piece which is embarrassingly off proportion wise. Ironically it wasn’t the foreshortening for once.
This is very much a mixed media piece – similar to another piece at Canela the week after. I used not only watercolour but instead of fountain pen as usual I added some dashes of Lyra watersoluble crayon too. This is because I unusually started with the watercolour first – it was meant to be a loose pure watercolour piece ended up having lines because it needed more detail.
That was part of the reason for the issues over proportion, it’s hard to measure with loose fluid watercolour painting as you are thinking in negative – white spaces and leaving areas, and by the time I got to drawing over, it was pretty much locked in, sadly.
And no paintstick piece for the first time in many months! What is wrong with me?
Leave a Comment! Be nice….