Roald Amundsen Portrait
Date: 11/25/22
Tags:
#victorian
,
#polar exploration
This is the result of a kind of experiment that I think turned out okay. I typically work digitally but recently I have been drawn to watercolor and ink. I wanted to try mixing up my process a bit to see if I could get some interesting results.
I based this portrait off of a few photos of Roald Amundsen when he was younger.
Click the read more for a rundown of the process.
This piece started digitally as a sketch. I thought working digitally to get the proportions and details worked out would be a good idea. I probably spent too much time worrying about the digital sketch though.
I printed the sketch and taped it to an LED light board with a sheet of watercolor paper on top. Then I applied a light brown wash to the paper in watercolor and let it dry. Then I went in with a dip pen and permanent black ink. I haven’t inked traditionally at all so there is a lot to improve on. I think the watercolor paper was too textured and a smoother paper would let the nib glide better. Halfway through inking I almost gave up because I wasn’t happy with how it was looking. You can seen lots of areas where the lineweight is inconsistent or I just redrew my lines. But things started to improve when I added ink wash. This was, honestly, my favorite part. Except that my black ink hadn’t fully dried in some places and it did start to feather. I will try to work on my patience.
After the ink wash was down, I tried to pull out some whites with gel pen and a white chalk pencil. I don’t think my base wash was quite dark enough to see the whites, though. I also used a brush pen to darken the hair before deciding it was ‘finished.’
All in all, I think I learned a lot from this piece. I will probably invest in some different paper, maybe some small brushes for inking, and I would love to get some more inks to try. I would like to try this process again.
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