Hello again. Today is my first drawing in a series of Inktense drawings that I
will do to practice up for entering the Derwent Art Prize. It is a competition
that takes place almost every year and I figured it would be a good motivator to
enter this year. I'm using the Derwent Inktense pencils, this is the 36 set, but
I'm only really using a few pencils from the set. Specifically, white, willow, bark,
charcoal gray, Indian ink, and ink black. As you will see I mostly using black
and charcoal for this drawing. The subject is my youngest son. As this is
just to help me practice I am not aiming for perfection, more I'm
aiming for speed and at the same time I'm playing around with some ideas in my
head. I've used the outliner they provide to trace in some lines. That worked well.
I have attempted to pre-stretch my watercolor paper that didn't go as well.
But as I don't use much water there was only small amounts of buckling. For the
36 set you have charcoal gray ink black and Indian ink for the dark tone colors.
The way I like to distinguish between them is - ink black is just pure black,
Indian ink seems to have more of a brown tone to it, while charcoal gray has more
of a blue tone. So I started with charcoal gray in the hair and switched
to ink black I used a bit of Indian ink on the jacket and then put that away. For
the remainder of the drawing I used ink black except for parts of the jacket
where I layered charcoal grey over ink black. This was mostly to have a
different look to the clothing than the skin. And of course I used a willow and
bark for the eyes. Now I originally made the pupil far too big, but one thing
about Inktense, you can often wet a brush and remove some of the ink even
after it dries. It doesn't always work, usually only if it hasn't really soaked
into the paper. I was then able to make the pupil smaller. I quite enjoyed doing
this little drawing. For one it didn't take that long from start to finish. I
It was probably about 4 hours whereas the colored pencil drawing will usually take
me more than 15 hours. Sometimes it is nice to work on a little section at a
time, but I also find it rewarding to spend a few hours on a drawing and have
a good grasp of what the final product will look like. I have gone over and
lightened up a few sections with the white pencil. Normally I would use the
white Inktense block for this, but I wanted to limit myself to just using the
36 set of inktense pencils if you have a 24 set you have all the pencils you need.
It doesn't come with the Indian ink but it really wasn't necessary.
Towards the end I determined I wasn't going to get the details I wanted so I
pulled out my Lyra Rembrandt colored pencils and used the black to fill in
the details. Tthis was mostly around the eyes a bit of the nose the mouth and
finally the eyebrows and eyelashes. For the Derwent Aart prize I can only use
Derwent products. I don't have Derwent colored pencils and have no plans to
purchase them. I've tried them out in the store and don't like the feel of them.
But I could pick up a black pencil if it's required for details. My other
options are to make the drawing bigger. A larger drawing means I could get in more
detail using the paintbrush. It would however take a lot longer and be more
costly to frame. But before I get too carried away I will probably need to
spend more time practicing first. I hope you enjoyed the drawing, I know I did and
that's all for now. I hope to be back in two weeks with another intense drawing.
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