Readhead Pencil Portrait

So I really like working with ink. If you can't tell, almost everything I've posted in the last year began life as a black ink drawing that got scanned and then coloured digitally. And that's fun as all hell, but I thought it'd be a good idea to swear off the black stuff for a bit to see how I cope. Maybe for six weeks, I don't know, I haven't decided. It depends how bad the shakes get.

So to start things off there's this thing above. It's a portrait based off a stock photo titled Nervosa by the excellent Nikxstock over on DeviantArt. If you would like to see the original you can do that here.

I still ended up scanning and colouring digitally, but the pencil drawing part was a bit of a change and really fun. Here's the scanned drawing before all the colouring got slapped on it:

So yeah, that was fun and I'm going to be doing similar stuff for a bit...

I did plan to write more about this no ink experiment, but it's the hottest day of the year in the UK and I went for an ill-advised run earlier.  I got so overheated that I had to abandon it halfway through, sit in the shade for a rest and then walk home really slowly and carefully. 33 degrees is nothing compared to places that have actual weather, but this is Bristol - I don't think it's ever happened before. And now I'm finding it a bit hard to focus. It's so lame when people in the UK complain about the heat, but I feel like a jellyfish trapped in a hot car eating toast.