Portraits 93 - 97 for the 100 Day Project

Here are my most recent portraits.

Portrait 95/100 (wrong no. on the artwork!)

Portrait 96/100 (wrong no. on the artwork!)

Portraits 84 & 85

Sktchy has been running occasional art challenges on Instagram featuring a particular person who has inspired lots of artists and one particular photo to draw. Portrait 84 was done for Sktchy's latest art challenge.

For portrait 85, I drew a Sktchy inspiration photo of the coolest kid. I love her sunglasses, hat, Mother Teresa tank, and frog!

This is her brother, whom I've drawn previously. They look like such a fun family!

Portraits 71 - 74 for the 100 Day Project

Here are my recent portraits for the 100 Day Project using inspiration photos from Sktchy.

Which do you like best?

Portraits 64 - 67 for The 100 Day Project

Here are my most recent portraits for The !00 Day Project.

Portraits for the 100 Day Project

Here are some recent portraits of my 100 day project.

Drawing inspiring artists

One thing I definitely love about the Sktchy app is being able to pay tribute to artist who inspire or support you by drawing them! I did that with varying degrees of success over the last few days.

Vin Ganapathy is a huge inspiration for me. He has been one of my teachers at Sketchbook Skool and is one of the first artists from whom I've bought original artwork! I love his portraits done primarily in Tombow brush pens. They are so expressive! I used my watercolors, Kuretake brush pen, and some of Marc Taro Holmes's watercolor techniques to draw Vin here. I loved the shadows in this inspiration photo.

Jane Royal is a beautiful water colorist who I've met on Sktchy. She paints people with the minimum of graphite lines and really lets the watercolors do their magic. She has been very supportive of my art. I wish I had captured her likeness better here. Nut, it's the thought hat counts, right?

Who are your favorite artists? Have you drawn or painted them?

Latest Portraits for the 100 Day Project

I haven't posted my latest portraits in some time! Though you can always click on the link above to see my entire 100 day portrait.

And finally, yesterday's portrait.

Thanks for following along!

To ink or not with watercolors?

This weekend, I talked this portrait of my friend's nephew.

In tackling this portrait, I decided to start with my pencil and then use watercolor. I didn't start with my normal fountain pen with Platinum carbon black ink.

This was a departure from my normal style, but I kind of liked it. So, I posted it on Sktchy and asked for feedback. The majority of the feedback was that I should leave the portrait as is - and the hardest thing with watercolor is knowing when to stop!

So, I thought I would tackle this next portrait of Kiana - in my usual style with fountain pen and ink first and watercolor next.

What do you think? Which do you prefer - watercolor & pencil or ink & watercolor?

Sktchy's WAXHandy Challenge

Sktchy is a fun and inspiring app for artists and people who want to inspire artists. Each weekend, Sktchy has a themed Weekend Art Extravaganza (#WAX). This past weekend, it was #WAXhandy and the challenge was to make art featuring hands. Here are my contributions.

The funny thing is that I was recently explaining my 100 day portrait project to someone in my figure drawing group and how I undertook it to improve a weakness I felt I had with portraits. I was saying that I have such trouble with drawing hands that I was telling her that I should do a 100 day project with hands and feet! I don't know if I can do 100 of those, but drawing hands for this weekend was challenging and fun!

What is your experience with drawing hands and feet? Do you relish the challenge or find it easy?

Playing with Koh-I-Noor Magic Pencils

I was inspired by Sktchy's weekend crosshatch challenge to pull out the Koh-I-Noor Magic multi-color pencils to do these drawings. It was fun!

Have you tried them? What do you think?

Trip to Monterey

This weekend, I took a trip to Monterey, Carmel, and Pacific Grove with my friends, Julie and Sharon. I had a lot of fun introducing them to the Sktchy app and drawing them!

I drew this at lunch at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had an awesome table with this lovely view.

Possible Athena? (16/100)

I'm exited to start working on illustrating a book about Greek mythology with my good friend, Steve. We are starting with Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare. All I know physically about Ahena is that she has gray eyes.

So, in doing my 16th portrait for the 100 day project, I thought I would look for an inspiration for Athena. I love Marissa Poetzl's light eyes in the inspiration photo for this drawing.

What do you think - does she look like a good Athena?