Sketchbook Development

In my sketchbook I have been keeping up with my own personal drawings. I design a lot of character and create a lot of drawings which are very exaggerated and not always anatomically in proportion, so it is important that I keep up the life drawing at the same because I find the observational drawing just as important as the drawings which come purely from my head. 

I have spent time observing people's facial features such as their lips, noses as well as their ears because these features in particular are ones which are unique to each person. I have just used pencil for these sketches because I found it gave me the best results when it came to shading, especially since these drawings are on a small scale. With the pair of legs I have drawn, I can see that they do look slightly out of proportion, however I am pleased with the shading I have used to highlight the muscle structure.

Through out my sketchbook I have tried to keep experimenting with different and new media. One of the new things I have started to use is Gouache. I enjoyed using this because it is a nice balance between acrylic and watercolour. These are the two kinds of paints I have the most experience with, so it was really satisfying to use something that seemed like a mixture of the two. I have always been somebody that loves using biro and fine liner to enhance my drawings, so I had a play about with different coloured liners to see how easily they could bleed out if painted over with water, because I really like the idea of using this technique more often. 

Some of my drawings are more character based and more abstract than others, so I have tried to use a mixture of different media to achieve different effects. Below are a few examples of some of my personal drawings. 

With these two drawings above I have used a mixture of watercolour, pencil crayon, biro and fine liner. I enjoy using this mixture, however I did alter the way in which I used them. In the first of the two, I created shading on the skin using quite fluid, smooth lines which I gradually faded out. However for the second, I used fine liner to create cross hatching in order to create shading. This was quite a risky one for me because I had never used this technique much before and I there was a risk of me spoiling this drawing I had spent a good while on! But I live on edge. I am really happy with these two results. 

I also tried to use more ink, one example of this is in the image above. I love the outcome of it because I think ink can sometimes create a more solid layer of colour than watercolour, which can become quite patchy.