Liquitex Ink!

February 5, 2017

Week 5 - Liquitex Ink! in Vivid Lime Green, Red and the new muted colors of Pink, Turquoise, and Violet. I also have Transparent Raw Umber and Dioxazine Purple, which I didn't get a chance to make drawings with this week. I made all of the drawings with a Speedball nib holder and drawing pen nib on Canson XL recycled Bristol Paper. I really like the muted colors and will probably get the other two colors in the set. I think that I need to get a little more practice getting a consistent line with the drawing nib, but I kinda like the uneven quality of the lines in these drawings.

Next up in Create-A-Thon 2017, Reeves Gouache Paintings on Kraft and Black Papers.

Sherman T. Skully - InkTober 2016

November 1, 2016

I have successfully completed the pen and ink drawing challenge for InkTober 2016! There were 31 brand new Sherman T. Skully drawings created this month. It was quite a challenge as each drawing took about 1 1/2 to 2 hours to complete from start to finish, sometimes spanning the entire day as I could find a few minutes to work on them. I created a list of ideas the week before InkTober to work from.

Each drawing started with a pencil sketch in a Piccadilly blank page journal, sometimes using reference for that day's activity. After working out the concept in pencil sketch, inking was done with a Pentel Pocket Brush and sometimes with a new pen that I tried that I received in my October Art Snacks - a Copic Gasenfude Pen. I liked drawing with the Copic Gasenfude, the tip seemed a little shorter than the Pentel Pocket Brush. The ink in the Gasenfude did not appear as black though as the ink in the Pocket Brush.

After inking, I used watercolor pencils on the cream colored paper of the journal, which is not watercolor paper. After wetting the watercolor pencils with a waterbrush to blend them, the journal pages would really curl and buckle, but I like the way the color looks on them. The finished drawings were scanned on Epson V500 Photo flatbed scanner.

I will be continuing the drawings, though not on a daily basis, so be sure to follow @sherman.t.skully on instagram to see what he gets into next.

31 Days of Skully for Inktober 2016

September 30, 2016

For this year's Inktober challenge I will be drawing a new Sherman T. Skully cartoon each day! Look for new postings to my Instagram account devoted to the goofy skeleton @sherman.t.skully

Mixed Media Doodling

April 14, 2016

The latest entries in my sketch journal - doodles made starting with watercolor wash, swatches of Derwent Aquatone pencils activated with a waterbrush, then Uniball Signo White Gel pen and Pentel Pocket Brush ink pen in a Strathmore Watercolor Visual Journal.

Funky Skeleton Drawings

November 24, 2015

We all know that I have a fascination with skeletal anatomy, though I'm not entirely familiar with all the names of the different bones. I'm especially fond of sketching skulls, mostly with an ink brush style pen such as the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen. I love the varying line widths that I can get with the brush pen. After completing a rough pencil sketch of the skeleton idea I have, I like to ink it in with the brush pen and then add color and texture to the drawing with watercolor pencil and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pens. I'm also quite fond of the of the waterproof Pitt Artist Pens with their bright colors and lightfastness. I'm thinking that I want to continue these goofy skeletal drawings and perhaps create a skeletal character that might be used on t-shirts, mugs, and such.

Urban Sketching

October 16, 2015

This week, I've gone on a couple of sketching outings to get more practice at loosening up my drawings. As I've been participating in Inktober this month, I find that my pen and ink drawings are much tighter than I'd like them to be. I would like to loosen up a bit, so I've been watching videos and reading about urban sketching, which is very similar to the mini-watercolor paintings I've been making in my pocket watercolor journal. I've been making photographs of the scenes that I want to paint as I've seen them on my outings around town, but I want to try to get out there and create on the spot pen and ink and watercolor drawings. This is going to get more difficult as fall and winter approaches, leaving less time in the evenings to get out there and sketch. I also still have my film photography hobby, but again it's getting more difficult to get out there and shoot. I've been trying to combine the two hobbies, which even my manic bipolar personality is overwhelmed with. But here, are a few of the sketches I made this week, with a walk around Hanover's Mt. Olivet Cemetery last weekend, and a lunchtime trip to the Walters Art Museum this week.

InkTober 2015

October 4, 2015

I'm a little late with this post, but I'll be participating in InkTober for the second time this year. Last year I was completely unprepared, not knowing what it was until scrolling through my instagram feed at 11:30 pm on the first day. I quickly sketched out something and posted it before midnight. Inktober is a month long daily drawing challenge using pen and ink in its various forms, with your daily drawings then being posted on social media. This year, I've prepared my folder of ideas and decided on a weekly theme of subjects for the month. This week's theme is "Cameras from my collection." Check in with me daily on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to see the daily pen and ink drawing.