This year for Drawvember, I compiled my own list of prompts, to ensure that I wasn’t going to use “not inspired” as an excuse for skipping days. Drawing actually brings me joy and satisfaction, and as it’s in rather short supply at this time of year for me, I have much at stake.
I picked words that appealed to me, rather randomly, without any clear idea how I was going to develop each prompt. So far, I’m having fun.
Day 16: “Cougar”
My favourite so far!
I was really pleased with the pencil sketch and found myself in a double-bind: it was perfect to me and I could consider it finished but, I wanted to add colour but was afraid to mess it up.
I am glad I tried, because I find the final result stunning!
I used only four of the five tubes of Holbein Artists’s gouache I received in a Sketchbox: yellow ochre, burnt sienna, leaf green and Prussian blue (the fifth one is ivory black, which I chose not to use, using blue instead, given that blue is ideal when there is snow.)
Day 17: “Boat”
A stylised oversized cruise ship sailing at night. I used gouache again, honouring my desire to experiment outside the black and grey ink brush pens that I love so much.
I used the tubes of Holbein Artists’s gouache I received in a Sketchbox: Prussian blue, burnt sienna, and ivory black. I used some titanium white watercolor from a tube to get the shades of blue and the grey. I wasn’t happy with the blue background. This has to do with the paper of my artbook which does not play well when too wet (96g/m2, 65 lb per sq. m.)
Day 18: “Planet”
This is an ink brush pens drawing of a man mounting an oversized pelican flying over a forest in a canyon, under a giant Jupiter. This is inspired from work by Moebius.
I used some of the November 2020 Sketchbox materials that I received just today: sepia ink Brush Writer from Kuretake, blue and green Twin Brushes from Monami. I also used a light grey ink and geranium red ink Brush Writer from Kuretake (the latter I found way too dark), and a pale rose water colour marker from Winsor and Newton.
Day 19: “Sullen”
This is my interpretation of “Woman Sitting on Edge of Veranda”, a work of Kitagawa Utamaro from 1798.
I used a black ink 0.05 mm line maker from Derwent and a light grey Brush Writer by Kuretake.
I drew it before, four years ago and I looked up that page in my artbook at the time: wow, unbelievable how much I have progressed since then! Everything is so much better in this version: proportions, line work, hues.
Day 20: “Jellyfish”
I went into Drawvember thinking I should experiment with new techniques or medium I don’t use often. Today’s prompt lended itself well to that. There is a shiny quality to jellyfish that I wanted to try to render using metallic paint. I have just one pan of such paint and it is blue. I also used black sumi ink in a rectangle background so that it would bring out the blue. It does achieve that, although I am not enamoured with the result. Perhaps had I used a bit of white paint for highlights and a bit of non metallic blue to bring out the shine I might have liked it more.