Quick Lines, then See What Happens…Faces and Landscapes

*Above, I firstly used yellow and dark grey non-watersoluble Neocolour 1, crayons on A4 paper. Then added watercolours and pencil ….

A swish of lines is how I generally begin most of my art works. I love the element of surprise from a speedy jump into to a drawing or painting – where the destination is not always initially clear, or mapped out. I think my years of drawing from life, and studying the fundamentals of drawing: line, tone, composition….helps give me the confidence to take this approach. Also, I got a lot of practice at this while raising a family – had to be fast, to fit in any art!

The small middle drawing above, is a quick one I did with ink pen and water-soluble graphite in one of my homemade sketchbooks. I took a snap of it with my iPad and then in Procreate I tidied it up around the edges and added a few more lines. I often like to have many, or at least some line work still visible in a finished work. Then I printed it onto A4 paper; one white and one brownish in colour. It was fun adding some water colour, pencil, gouache and crayon to them.

The ink in my printer is fade-resistant, and waterproof – so it’s easy to add wet media to the print. I put various types of watercolour and drawing paper through my printer, and have found many of these papers produce lovely prints. I also have some beautiful fine art “inkjet” paper. I often need to do some editing (in the photo section of my iPad) and proof prints to see what may need tuning to get a good final print. I share more about all of this on my page, “Printing iPad and Traditional Art”, and in various posts.