Over the last few weeks I’ve been getting back into drawing. Unsurprisingly, this plan, like all others, has needed modifying when it confronted reality. In this case, it’s the digital aspect. I thought that I’d be able to focus mostly on that, and there are good theoretical reasons to do so. However, two things have modified my approach.

The first thing is that I’ve swapped in the Old Skool Skirmish project, and it just doesn’t feel appropriate to do those illustrations digitally. Not to start with, anyway.

Secondly, I simply don’t enjoy making digital art as much as using traditional media. It’s just less fun. There are also some marks I can make and visual results I can get traditionally that I can’t find a way to do digitally. The opposite is also true, and working digitally has some really big upsides. There is definitely merit in being able to do both, and I think that I’ll eventually settle on a process which flits between them as needed for each project. For the moment, as I’m mostly working on the retro vibes of Blast ’Em!, I’ll be working traditionally.

As I haven’t done this for ages and have no idea where half my old kit is, it’s also been a nice excuse to buy some shiny new art stuff. Mostly this has been pens, as you can see.

A variety of pens for drawing in black, white, and grey. 

I did get myself some water-based coloured pens too. Back in the day, I rather took to the American idea of “water media” rather than thinking of watercolours, inks, gouache, watercolour pencils, acrylics, etc as separate ways of working (how they’re usually taught). Thinking of them all as water media and combining them in the same pictures gives you all sorts of intriguing options. These pens looked like being another entry to that stable of water-based tools. I never got on half so well with oil-based paints or alcohol-based inks. Not sure why. Either way, I’m going with my strengths, so it’s back into the water for me J

All the colours of the rainbow and a few extra to boot. 

The chicken scratches of the title are me practicing making marks with the new pens. This is basic stuff, but absolutely vital if you’re going to make the marks you need when you need them. My rustiness betrays me here, so I’m keeping them to myself. It’s all simple enough to fix though. I just need to put in the hours to get my familiarity with them back. In the past I used to draw with technical pens. The new fineliners are a smooth replacement, and the brush pens are a joy to use. Looking forward to being able to do them justice.