Drawing My Drawing Friends Drawing

One day a few weeks ago, a sketching friend of mine invited me over.  We agreed to sit and draw each other while we were drawing each other.  That is fun!

Here are the scribbles that resulted.

Before I left the house, I warmed up with a very quick (4 minutes) sketch of my black cat asleep.  I did this with the Aquash light black brush pen on Tomoe River paper (which is VERY thin, not opaque, but never bleeds--ink moves around nicely on top of it).  After I did it, I wanted more black, so I went over it with the calligraphy pen.  It was an experiment worth it--I kind of like the deep black over the wash of the light black. This is picture #4 below.

When we got together, my friend and I agreed not to sit still, but to move about normally, drawing, so we had to deal with a live moving subject.  About half way through another person joined us. 

I took the Strathmore journal, some analogous Prismacolor pencils, a Pitt Caligraphy pen and a Pentel Color Brush Pen, dye based. 

Page 1 above was done with three colors of the colored pencils.   I had never tried this before and I really really liked the technique (thanks to Roz Stendahl who introduced me to it).  I'm not sure I understand how to choose what color to go where, but I scribbled with the lightest color, then corrected, corrected as I went, and then added value.  I like the vibrance the colors introduced--I like the energy in the drawings done this way.  Scribbling, looseness, seemed easy in this technique.  I didn't tense up too much.

Page 2, I used the Pitt calligraphy pen.  I like that pen.  I tried to keep it loose as well.

Page 3, I used the pentel dye based brush pen.  Hmm... values with a big pen are hard!
Values are hard for me!  But that's why the scribbling, the practice mark-making, the practice keeping energy and looseness as I try to depict what I see, what I notice.

I am very happy that I am beginning to see values in faces much more clearly.  I still need to develop skill rendering it, but I feel like I can see it.  That's good.  

I really like the incoming fuzzy hair on my friend on page 2.  I feel like my marks caught that texture well. 

I would like to continue to learn more about how to render values using a pen and hatching (as in page 2).  I always feel like my results look overdone.  Lacking subtlety.  Maybe I need lighter or thinner marks?  More scribbly-ness?

This post comes from work I did in a class with Roz Stendahl, Drawing Practice:  Drawing Live Subjects in Public.  I recommend it!