Keeping it real simple today using just a piece of printer paper and a ballpoint pen. Let's draw
The secret to drawing with pen is finding the pen that is good for you
I use the bic round stick grip so you'll see I'm able to get some really thin light lines
I feel like I can get a lot more variety of line weight and line widths with this pen
So you'll see just at the beginning. I'm trying to just lay out the character figure out where they're gonna sit on the page and
Do that very very lightly. So that these sort of sketch
Lines like the construction lines aren't as visible when I finished the illustration
you really can't do this sort of technique with any sort of gel pen or like a very
Liquidy pen the big round stick grip is pretty dry. And I think that's what really helps me be able to accomplish these sort of
techniques and then once I have all those constructions laying down and I feel like the
Character is pretty well laid out on the page. I'll go in and darken some of these
some of the lines I
like to go in with the eyes first just because there's my favorite part to draw and I really think
Once the face starts looking like a face
Like I feel it's just so much more energized to finish. The rest of it especially says this particular piece
I put a lot of detail into the hair because I was purposely focusing on
Trying to capture hair and like the strands of hair and like the details of hair
Because I think I can be a little bit lazy when it comes to hair
I'll tend to like just sort of like make up the curls that don't really follow the curl
Line like some curls just be crazier than others
So I really wanted to focus on trying to capture a bit more of a realistic
ishi hair I
Don't know just following the strands of hair and making it look a little bit more plausible
You may notice that I bounced around a lot while working on this particular piece
Like I was using to do in two face doing the hair and then I was doing like the flower crown
And that's because there's just a lot of detail on this particular illustration
And I don't want to get bored because I mean there's so much going on
Like if I were to focus just on the hair then I think I would get a little bit, you know bored
So I'm bouncing around
Working on like her detailed flower crown with like the baby's breath and those leaves and then I'll like jump to the face
Work on the face a little bit more and so I'm constantly tweaking and altering
different elements of the illustration like slowly and like, you know bouncing around and this definitely kept me like
You know intrigued and invested in the illustration without like getting too lazy and you might be thinking. Hey, wait a minute
You're an artist. Why are you worried about being bored when you're drawing?
and
the reason I'm talking about this is because like with this drawing in particular and like any drawing where I'm trying to teach myself like
A new lesson like trying to be more detailed with my art and creating like those strands of hair like I was talking about earlier
these are things that I've kind of been putting off for so long and
That's why I'm not as good as good at them as I want to be
so it's very it's a little bit more difficult for me to practice them because they're obviously things that I don't I
Don't gravitate towards drawing on their own like they're not things that I'm just like hmm
I just really want to draw really luscious hair right now
Like that's never been something that I've wanted to just draw faces have always been like my favorite thing. So I'm able to
Teach myself to draw something that I'm not as good at and something that I want to improve on
by jumping between the face and the hair like very very often and
It's just like it's kind of like a trade-off. It's like oh, well, I'm getting a little bit bored of doing the hair
So let's go back to the face work on the face a little bit and then like okay times up
I need to go back to the hair and like I think it's just a good exercise to help you
Practice the things that you want to do by incorporating them with some of the things that you need to do
So yeah, if that makes any sense at all if you've been around my channel for a while, you know
I'm a pretty big
Advocate for sketching and drawing with pen as like a learning tool and I've even made a video on just like the benefits of sketching
with pen
But I think this is this like one
Span of like six eight months where I literally only drew in pen and over that time
I kind of learned what I liked about it and what I didn't like about it and I feel like I've learned a lot of
Techniques that have helped me create better illustrations with pen
and like and I think gotten to this point where I was like pencils are for losers pens are the way to go where
which is so if not true because
after I had gone through that span of only sketching in pen and like I feel like it had really improved my art and
like taught me to be light handed and to really be
conscious of the lines that I'm putting on the paper because I couldn't erase that moment when I like switched back to like a
mechanical pencil which had been my go-to before that like Oh,
Like mechanical pencil just felt so much like my results were so much better. Like I feel like whatever I had learned
Using a pen for those months
had translated into using this pencil and I was like using it so much better than I had ever used it before and it was
Just like it's like a whole new world like it was amazing
And I remember just being like oh
how could I ever give up a mechanical pencil and I think it was because I
hadn't learned the techniques that I needed to use a mechanical pencil to its fullest potential and by using pen it had somehow like
Thrown me into this
Place where I had to learn these things
to be able to use a pen properly and then when I went back to the mechanical pencil, it was just
It was just like a I was just blown away. It was so much fun
and like currently I really enjoy using a pencil but I'll go back and forth and use a pen depending on like you know, where
Where I am at that moment, like if I don't really want to smudge
I don't want a lot of smudges happening all over my hand
I'll use the pen and like that's another just awesome thing about pen in particular
it's just there is no smudges and like you can sketch in your
Sketchbook and you don't have to worry about the pages rubbing up against each other and like ruining all your hard work
Like everything is just the way you left it. It's just there's that sketch is exactly how I drew it
whereas a pencil like
sometimes when you're just throwing your bag and your your book in your bag and like pulling it out and flipping through the pages or
Drawing on it and like your hand just goes all over your sketches
And then you just end up with lead just spread it
Everywhere and it's just a big mess and it's like somehow it got on your face and you're like what when did that happen?
And you only notice it a couple hours later
Whereas a pen doesn't do that. So yeah, I
Have a big fan of pens
But I'm also a fan of pencils and I think using a pen has taught me to use a pencil better
So if you've never sketched in pen
I
Definitely recommend it
Get out a nice cheap one of those pens like the one I'm using where you can get like 12 for a dollar
Those cheap ones are like the bank gives you for free
Those are like the perfect pens to sketch with because they're not super juicy
they have a bit of a dryness to them and you can
Get those light lines and they'll stick of lines and it teaches you to be a lot lighter handed and you don't have those smudges
and like you're very conscious about the lines you're placing on the paper and you're like
I know it's just it's a different mindset and I just definitely recommend it if you've never done it before and do it. Oh
Use a pen
I wanted to talk about this for the last little while you'll notice I've been doing a bunch of hatching all over the hair
Trying to darken the tone of the hair. And this was like this really like brought the piece together
it was a lot of fun because it just
Separated like her skin tone from the hair and it separated like the flower crown from the hair as well
created that contrast we're going for and I really do like the way it looked after I did that but also
By doing that it gave a lot more attention to like the size of the hair
And at this point I noticed like her hair has some serious volume like girl
That's amazing um I not exactly what I was going for
But I mean, I'm sure she's quite happy that she was this blessed
Like just look at it's like a goddess or something
But I guess it's kind of what I was going for with like the flower crown like a bit of a regal look
So the fact that her hair is just so big and voluminous
Kind of fits the theme
But the other thing was when I was sketching this because I originally had done like a very small sketch in my sketchbook
And I tend to draw small and it's kind of what I'm more comfortable drawing
So another thing I was trying to practice with this particular illustration was drawing bigger
so I tried to draw a whole face over the entire eight and a half by eleven sheet and I
Kind of messed up
Translating sketch to this
paper and I think it had something to do with it being so large because in the sketch her face is like dipped down and
She's like looking up
like that and um with this sketch I
definitely adjusted the proportions that face so that she was kind of like looking up but I had simplified it in a way that you
Know and the other sketch her lips were like under her nose like her face was so dipped
Whereas this one it wasn't quite as much I like I don't know
I tried to I guess beautify it maybe that makes sense cuz you know that angle doesn't look very good like, you know
No one wants to see their nose and their mouth and like the exact same location, basically
So I guess I tried to like beautify it air quotations and by doing that it stretched out the face of art
Which kind of destroyed the proportions and the foreshortening so I kind of like cheated and in the cheating
Kind of had a worse result
I don't know though
Because I kind of liked the face but it does look weird and squished which I guess I did on purpose
But that's what happened to then once I was done with the hair. I'm pretty happy with that
I thought it was a bit too blank where her chest was and I wanted to give her some kind of outfit and I decided
on like a lacy
Almost turtleneck thing like a part of a wedding dress maybe so it's like super lacy and detailed. So I started working on that
I slowly built it up started with like some scribbles basically and then the lines that I liked the best I darkened up and
You know, built up on top of and worked on that and slowly made it look I guess a little bit more like lace
I really should have looked up a reference before I did that. Oh, but overall, I guess I'm pretty happy with it
Anyway, this was oh wait
I also actually I guess I cheated I went in with like this posca pen
To try and add some highlights to her eyes because I had originally left
Spaces so the white paper could you know shine through where highlights would be in her eyes?
But I decided to go in with the posca pen and just try to lighten that up just a little bit
Yeah, basically after that I just went over and did a few more details here and there and I was done so here is my finished
Illustration using only a ballpoint pen and a bit of a posca. And yeah, this is what I ended up with
I hope you enjoyed watching me sketch this out and draw for you
um
I had a lot of fun and I'm really excited to be
Teaching myself new things and you know getting better and slowly improving my art style. So yeah. Thank you guys for watching
See you guys all next week, and I hope you have a delicious evening full of waffles! Byeee