The idea for this portrait came to me when I was looking at a packaging of soap - it was very glossy and it looked like it could look like pearls. As well as the soap packaging, I used white ink mixed with acrylic paint (for opacity) on black paper.
Long story short I needed a title, and prior to that my phone opted to have some sort of techno-stroke earlier in the day, and I took inspiration from this. So, yeah...
My new method of finding something interesting to draw - now that I'm mostly at home, like everyone else - is using StreetView. I use the app to search interesting places around the globe. This one is a sketch of somewhere near Lagos in Nigeria.
And then one of them gets shot, and Ellie says, "You know you didn't have to do that, right? But that's okay, you just keep being you!" ... Be that Unplanned Variable! Be the Hope Colonist, and play Outer Worlds by Obsidian today!!!!
India ink on tissue paper. I had never used ink on this kind of paper before; I really liked the results! There are some folds and wrinkles on the paper that give the pattern some interesting details. The paper is also super absorbing, which plays nicely with the quantities of ink. Since it's very thin, there can easily be overlays between textures. And finally, when trying to use less ink (so that it wouldn't seep through and cause a big dot - the absorbing quality is nice, but it was also somewhat of a challenge!) I used very little ink on the lettering, causing a scratchy, dry look.
