Quality And The Male Nude

Here is another of the series of ink and watercolour nudes I did a while ago. This is an older male model I’ve worked with for years, he’s a stalwart of the life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop. I did the line drawing with Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens. They’re my favourites and I’ve been using them for about a decade now. They’re waterproof, permanent and lightfast and they are very smooth to draw with. The watercolours are Winsor & Newton artist quality half pans and I have used a Cotman watercolour sketchbook, size A3.

It’s vital to use the best quality materials – acid free paper, permanent drawing pens and lightfast watercolours – otherwise the work will fade away to nothing over time. As a rule of thumb, materials marketed as ‘archival’ or ‘artist quality’ will not give you any problems but materials sold as ‘student quality’ or unmarked will not be good enough for a professional artist who intends to sell their work.