I was sketching in my other style, the one that is simpler and more stylized, and wondering if I should develop more work in this style.

Was playing with negative space and definition of shape with color verus line. It evolved into a Cinderella picture, with some rather hot ugly step-sister and step mother.

Now and then I try to draw fashion models and fall flat on my face. I simply hate drawing pencil thin girls, they have no figure. Then I go back to drawing bikini models and it feels better. It’s funny, fashion illustration; half the time I think fashion designers don’t actually want people to wear their clothes, their model sketches look like well-heeled aliens. I also found it kind of funny that someone accused me of being part of the ‘teens dying from anorexia’ problem. Urm. For the record none of my girls are anorexic. If they were, I would be getting jobs from every fashion magazine in town. Tsk – The things we say to be politically correct online.

Was trying out the pen on some proper Shikishi paper. Paper is thicker than I thought it would be. Pen doesn’t react interestingly on this, not any more different that the 100gsm cartridge paper I was using. Will try real ink with a brush at some other date.

Various sketches I did some time ago with an ink pen. I doodle stuff when I’m trying to come up with ideas.

Victorian dress is really fun to draw – the skirts and bodices lend well to hyper feminity. It’s a nice period to subvert too, visually, since it was a time when culture was really so full of itself that deviations stand out very easily. Ink pen for the first sketch, brush pen and Photoshop for the second.

Had a bad few days of sketching, this was the first sketch that started to look decent again.

This is what I draw when I think about love. Which is odd because I’m not torn up about love at all. But it seems romantic all the same.

Well, it does, doesn’t it?..

Just a quick, loose sketch I did of my husband when I first started playing about with the brush pen.