100 impressions

Finishing this 100 Impressions series with pen and ink sketches using the Flair, Pentel Color brush black and silver.  I even added an extra sketch for good measure.  The soccer poses are from today during my daughter’s fall league game.  It took a while to do but just the same, I ended up with a hundred sketches I didn’t have.

Now all I need to do is keep going…

(Click on an image to launch LIGHTBOX and arrow left/right to cycle through each image)

For this next set, I started incorporating background washes using a water brush and smearing ink around to change things around a little. There’s a local coffee shop frequented by seniors who make for some of the best subjects for sketching. Mixed in are random people from car washes, malls, etc.  Used the Papermate Flair fine point and Pentel Color Brush black on all of these, plus some Photoshop tones for legibility.

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Halfway there…  This set is called “Theme park people“.  I spent last Sunday at Six Flags Magic Mountain for my son’s birthday.  What else does a wimpy guy who doesn’t ride rollercoasters do in a theme park? (except consume massive quantities of artery friendly amusement park food)

Also, if you haven’t known already, I’m a bit of a tool hog.  Over the years I’ve tried just about every pen, brush, etc. that’s commercially available looking for the most versatile, most reliable product that would win the “One pen I would bring if I could only bring one” award.  So after trying out a wide gamut of pens of all price ranges the winner is:  Papermate’s inexpensive FLAIR pen.

The Flair beat out the likes of Pentel, Faber Castell, Pilot and Zebra. (plus countless others).  The lion’s share of the line work done with this exercise was done with a Flair.  The great thing about this pen aside from the fact that you can buy a truck load of them for next to nothing is it’s fabulous line quality.  It breaks up with a quick stroke yet if you need a nice unbroken line, you can get it by applying just a bit more pressure.  It’s great for general sketching which means all you need is ONE pen your pocket.  For someone like me who tends to bring upwards of five or six pens at a time, it’s a god-send.

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If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you might have read about my purchase of Apple Computer’s premier device, the iPad 2.  My intention of course is to see how well I can adapt it as a drawing platform despite knowing the drawbacks of capacitive screen input versus pressure sensing digitizers.  I’ll save more in-depth reviews about apps and tools on another post.  As I continue with this exercise of posting 100 sketches I’ve included 4 drawings done on the iPad using PROCREATE which is by far of all the drawing apps I’ve tried, has been the most fun and straightforward to use.  (see the first 4 images) The textured brush simulation is pretty nice.  As for input tools, I’ll also do a tool roundup at some point after I’ve given sufficient time to test them out.

The rest of the sketches are traditionalyl done with the same pens and brushes as the previous posts….  The Teppan cooks are from tonight done while we dined to celebrate my son’s birthday…  As for the vehicles?  Did I mention I LOVE drawings cars, bikes and other modes of transport?

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Over the years I’ve develop the knack for drawing specific subjects and committing them to memory. It’s like scanning information to your brain.  Once I draw things a few times it’s filed away back there somewhere for easy retrieval at some point.  It’s basically muscle memory while breaking down the subject matter to it’s basic form.  Not to say I would still require reference material to get fine details down, but it’s nice to be in a zone where you can at least get by with some reasonable facsimile of…  

Back to traditional pen and ink…  A lady and a buncha kids!

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Small digital doodles using Photoshop CS3 and texture pen…