Because The Night

I was in an experimental mood today.  I wanted to try out more of my new Inktense pencil colours, the saddle brown and sepia ink not having been given a runout yet.  And I wanted to try a bit of minimalist drawing after reading the Frédérick Forest book.  

My plan was to fill the paper fairly randomly with inktense pencil marks, albeit leaving a bright sunlit band of saturated colours sweeping over it, leaving unsaturated colours in the tip left and top right.  I'd then use a water rush to paint a London skyline across the top of the painting and a simplified figure along the bottom (Becca being today's model, by the way).

And I did all this,  the most difficult bit was being able to see the outline that I'd drawn before adding the pencil marks.  I did go over the pencil marks with the green inktense pencil to try to make them clearer but they ended up looking too clear.  Clearly it will be a delicate balancing act if I go down this route again.  Still, after wetting the skyline and figure lines, this didn’t look too bad for a first attempt.  I added some more water in downwardly dribbling vertical lines be this looked good too.

But then I tinkered and ruined everything.  I thought the composition could do with some diagonal lines to keep it interesting, so I sprayed some watery lines into it, from top right to bottom left.  I think I used the wrong spray bottle here, ending up with too much water on the page.  Maybe just flicking a bit on with my finger would have been better.  Still, there are always ways to make things even worse and I did this by rubbing kitchen paper diagonally along the watery marks, leaving everything in a mess.

And then I rescued things by going over the lines with a fineliner pen.  After doing this, I even wet all the remaining marks with kitchen paper, stroking from top right towards bottom left.  And that was me definitely done for the day.

It was an interesting g experiment.  Some stuff worked, some didn't.  But I know that next time I'll start by going over the lines with fineliners.  Then I'll add the dry Inktense pencil marks, then wet them with brushes in a downwards direction, not necessarily exactly to/from the lines.  And I may add some small watery drips but nothing excessive.  Still, that's all for next time.

This one's not going up for sale.