A Random Head In The Bookshop Café

I like to sit and sketch in Waterstone’s café, it’s a lovely atmosphere, it’s a bookshop as well. People are often reading while they’re having a cuppa, so it’s much easier to sketch them than people at a gig.

The Last Of The Old Year

I went up to Elysium for New Year’s Eve with Husb and SIL and had a fab time. I did a bit of scribbling, of course, in pencil into my size A6 Indigo-bound sketchbook, the last of 2025.

Playing With Pattern

This is the final sketch I did at the last life drawing session of 2025 at Swansea Print Workshop. Although she has short hair, it is styled and I used my pen to create patterns. It’s given me ideas for how I might develop it.

Textures In Pen

During my last life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop, I switched to a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen and started to enjoy playing with textures. This is a 10 minute pose onto vintage paper (no watermark).

Switching To Pen

For the last few sketches at the recent life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop, I switched from my usual graphite block to a Faber Castell Pitt drawing pen. The graphite is great for tones and simple line work, but I wanted to get more fine details so I made the switch. I did the basic outline and features in graphite first before starting in with the pen. This is a 10 minute pose onto vintage paper (no watermark).

More Time, More Accuracy

This is a 25 minute pose from my most recent life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop. Having more time doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a lot more content than in a quicker drawing. This 25 minute pose doesn’t have much more than one of the 15 minute poses, but it’s a lot more “correct” – I was able to measure the placing of the ear with more accuracy, for example.

Trying Out Textures

Here’s the middle poses at my last life drawing session at Swansea Print Workshop , two 15 minute poses using graphite onto a good quality but reasonably cheap cartridge paper. I started to play with the texture in the model’s hair, she has a short yet fairly elaborate hair style.

Portrait Drawing: Week 8

It’s 8 weeks since I started back at life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop after a long break (see here) and here are the warm-up sketches. I’m aiming to improve my portrait drawing over the next year. These are 5 minute sketches, using a graphite block onto a good quality but cheap cartridge paper. Sometimes I make notes when I notice something that needs to be corrected, like I have a habit of placing the ear too far forward on the face when I’m drawing a profile.

#Caturday Archives: 36

Here’s a cat sketch from way back on February 2015, when Sparta Puss was only just creeping into middle age – she’s proper elderly now!

Imaginary Head

I was playing with some Derwent Inktense blocks the other day, using them to draw on top of a very bland pastel drawing that I didn’t like. I let my imagination lead the way, which is something I rarely do and should do more often. It’s Christmas so I put my imaginary head in a paper hat, like the ones you get out of a Christmas cracker.