process: Sketch with Marker and brush with water

Marie and several others asked how I made this sketch. It is very simple, but not "easy," LOL!

Maybe I will make another and show it step by step.

But for now, here is what to do:

1)find a marker or felt-tip pen that is water soluble. I used a Crayola marker (or pen).

2)TEST the pen with a small brush and clear water to see how it reacts to wetting. It must produce "ink" or "paint" when wetted or it will not work. Some pens work better than others.

I was testing various pens to see how they would work--it partly depends on how large a sketch you plan to make--the larger the sketch, the larger the pen!

This is my test page--I wouldn't have made it so messy if I'd know I was going to share it. The aqua-colored arrows mark the better pens for this project, the hot pink one marks the pen I chose to use.

3)Draw the sketch. To tell you the truth, this sketch was an experiment--I measured my husband's nose and the distance from his nose to his mouth and his "inter-oculary" distance (pupil to pupil) and so on. Draw the sketch with the pen. Do not color much except where you want it to be very dark.

(I drew the picture lightly in pencil first, then lightly sketched with the pen, in this case).

4)Carefully, with a small brush wetted with clean water, brush over the pen marks and use the ink or paint that is lifted for shading.

Note: it is not very forgiving or correctable, once you start with the "painting" part, so use care. You may want to make a few practice sketches first to get the hang of it. The first one I made, I used too much ink and it came out very dark--I didn't like it.

And here's one for Marie--a page from one of my small sketchbooks (click image to view larger):

One more IMPORTANT thing: water color paper or at least heavy duty sketch paper works better for this than plain paper, which tends to buckle.