Category: Techniques

I’ve been drawing for a while, so it’s pretty instinctive to move my pen in different ways to create the illusion of texture. Drawing in the same way each time isn’t necessarily best for our development as artists, though. It’s sometimes good to explore new ways to draw and to take a break from the…

Ink is a lovely medium to draw with and there are many ways to use it. One of my favourites is to use a watersoluble ink to draw the basics of the sketch and then to add water to the drawing. The water dilutes the ink and pulls it away from the original lines on…

Some of my favourite watercolours are in the green and blue range so I had great fun with this week’s quick sketch. I was going to draw another scene, but as I sketched the curves that I wanted the hills to take, I realised that I liked the curves as they were. When I added…

This time of year is great for picking up some extra art supplies as there are so many offers for Black Friday week, the run up to Christmas and during the New Year sales. It can be difficult to know what’s worth investing in though, so I’ve decided to try out a few of my…

With the Autumn Leaves in Ink workshop coming up, I’ve been creating lots of leaf ink drawings to show as examples and to test out different colour combinations of ink. While doing this, it occurred to me that these leaves would make lovely handmade greetings cards. As I had some card making supplies already, I…

Autumn is such a beautiful time of year, especially the wonderful warm colours of the leaves as they lose chlorophyll and fall from the trees. With the wind this year, there often seems to be more leaves in the air than on the ground, but I managed to catch a few to photograph and draw.…

The recent ‘Sketching Wildflowers in Ink’ workshops have got me thinking about other plants that can seem very complex to draw. Flowers, such as those from the dandelion family, often have so many petals that they seem impossible to tackle. Working out the pattern of the arrangement of petals, and then figuring out the guidelines…

One of the most amazing things about colour is the way different hues affect each other. The vibrancy that can be created by having the right colours next to each other is a powerful tool for artists to use when creating their work. It’s often said that colours occurring in nature tend to work well…

Leaves often take supporting roles in art. They give colour and structure to landscapes and floral works, but are often not depicted in detail or as the focal point of an artwork. There are good reasons for this and the decisions you make as an artist as to how leaves are represented can make or…

Artistic expression comes in many forms, but one of the foundations of many types of artwork is drawing. Using a photograph as a reference for your drawing can be a powerful tool to create stunning and lifelike artwork and is often much more convenient than drawing on location. In this blog post, I’ll explore the…