Fueled by Clouds & Coffee: A New Sidekick

I’m now more than two-thirds done with my 100 Day Project – I can finally see the finish line! Although it’s become easier by developing short series around my “characters,” it’s still a challenge every day.

Faucet Handle now has a sidekick, Soap Dispenser. Hands are much more difficult to draw than feet! You’d think that I, of all people, wouldn’t have trouble with hands, but the scale I’ve chosen (a 3 ½-by-5 ½-inch page) is too small for detail. It’s interesting that when I’m drawing from imagination, I often have to make the hand gesture or do the yoga pose with my own body before I can draw it.

Technical note: For most of my 10-year drawing practice, I have not used a pencil underdrawing. Whether I use pencil or ink, I simply restate the line and leave the original in place because it usually disappears in the shading. I think it has forced me to become a more confident draughter. But that’s because until now, I have always drawn from observation. Now that I’m drawing from imagination, I find that I sometimes don’t know what I’m drawing until I get some lines down, and those initial thinking/searching lines make a muddy mess if they are visible in the finished sketch.

Soap Dispenser plays the mandolin in a bluegrass band.

For the first time, I’m making regular use of a non-photo blue pencil for the initial underdrawing. It’s not literally invisible when photographed or scanned, but it’s pale enough that it doesn’t muddy the final ink drawing. Although I could erase it, I don’t want to – I like seeing the evidence of my thinking and searching. My current favorites are the Blackwing and the Caran d’Ache Sketcher. Both are dark enough to see easily and soft enough not to inscribe the paper.