Face Book

On my recent birthday sojourn up to London, rather than finding any gems in FP or Gosh (only picking up the two latest Largo Winch albums, and later Jummy Corrigan from Foyle's...great graphics---Tom Paulin's as big a twat as ever---but the story isn't particularly involving so far), I really enjoyed visiting a branch of Cassart, a chain of art shops. The one I visited was near Gosh and was a treasure trove, finally turning up the ellipses I've been after for ages as well as loads of pens and pads.

I picked up a small A5ish pad to experiment with using the pens but have now called this my Facebook. I've been drawing a few faces lately and want to brush up on my likenesses (still can't get a decent Erica Durance). I've sketched a few faces in this book, not particularly subjects I would choose but because they are handy in my reference files or magazine stack.

I pencilled intending to ink but soon found I was stuck in which way to go...I tried a Jessica Alba in my current clean line manner but shaded a bit while judging the features and quite like the results. I'm not sure whether to stay clean line, pencil shade some features or leave the sketch as is, uninked.

I always wanted to do a decent Michael Rosenbaum Lex Luthor but felt the first clean line sketch in this book didn't really look like him so began noodling...think this will involve lots of hatching so took another pass at a clean line approach, which is more ready to ink using the Faber Castell brush-style pens I obtained, not exactly brush pens but similar. I quite like them and look forward to doing a full illo with them.

I also looked back at my recent Kristen Bell and thought something was just wrong about the gob...checking the original reference again, she was actually smiling with her lips apart and I'd either missed that detail or not inked the line. I was happy with it otherwise so fixed it today, results above...

Hopefully, my Facebook could become a nice little pocket book...