Something a little different this week: Drawing using a watercolour pencil. I have seen the original photo, but am not including it because I don't have express permission to. Watercolour pencil is a lovely medium to practise pencil portraiture, but you can take it one step further and play around with colour. I do suggest, as this person did, drawing a portrait in graphite pencil first, just to get the feel of the face, because watercolour pencil can be less easy to erase. Using it to draw the portrait and then using a small-to-medium brush to add a little water to loosen up the drawing can add a really nice effect. A point to make here is that if you are doing this, it's a must to use watercolour paper. I would recommend getting a pad that is 300 GSM, so that the water doesn't interfere with the flatness of the paper. This is a lovely portrait made by someone without a lot of portrait drawing experience. My main pointers would be to add more definition to the outside edges of the hair, to the chin line, and also to the hand so that it makes immediate sense as soon as you look at the picture rather than having to work out that there is a hand there. The portrait has inspired my tips and demos over the next couple of weeks, which will be about hair and also eyebrows and eyelashes. The face is rendered well, and the definition of the features and shapes within it are accurate. Good job!

Before I get to any critique, I want to comment that drawing in pen is quite a different experience and far harder than using pencil but obvious reasons because you can't arise any lines pen drawing is more difficult than it might initially appear. That being said, drawing in pen is a lot of fun and sometimes all you have to hand is a pen of some kind although this drawing was obviously made with a fine tip black pen which gives a really nice feeling to sketches, and you can see that the artist obviously has some skill in terms of the way that they have dealt with shadow with their regular slanted lines. Overall, the portrait is nicely proportioned and feels very well done. The texture of the hair really demonstrates how a few lines can give an overall feeling to the texture of an area without drawing every single thing that you see. Main points on this drawing are simply that the lower half of the face below the nose feels as if the angles need checking. The left hand side of the lower lip (as we look at it) potentially needs to angle towards the centre a touch. Overall this is a minor part of the drawing and the shape of the upper teeth in particular are treated really nicely. My comment to the artist is potentially to try things out in pencil with a structure when the angle of a face is particularly tough. I have seen other work by this artist and this particular source was quite a tough one in terms of over angle of the face so what might seem easy isn't always as easy when you go to draw it. If you want to do a drawing in pen and it doesn't quite work out, go back to pencil think about the structure, and then go back to drawing in pen. I have done this before and the difference between the first drawing and then the final drawing is immense. However, very inspiring work to critique!