On site drawing in Venice, Italy

Stayed in a Venezian apartment, and made use of the early morning hours to draw on site. What a good feeling it was.

Sketch of Melaka

This place brings back fond memories... chendol by the roadside, eating cockles at the backstreet alley, Jonker Street, chicken rice balls, Assam Laksa, Muah Chee :)

Drawing #2 - portrait with brush pen and pastel

It's a lazy Monday morning and I am off from work. Decided to do some doodling with my brushpen and pastel, and drew a friend. 

Here's how it looks before I applied the brushpen to the water-soluble pastel:

Here's how it looks after I applied the brushpen to the water-soluble pastel:

I gave her hair a lot of volume!

Thoroughly enjoyed the experience, though I probably didn't do her justice. Hah! In any case, here are the materials I used:

Love the sketchpad as it has perforated lines for tearing the pages off. It's got quite a bit of bite hence probably more suitable for pencil and graphite work. The pastel is nice too, and I prefer to work it with water as it is a bit sticky on paper when in the dry form. The brushpen is good for everything. 

Need to practise more for greater control over the color shading. As it is, it is difficult to get the shading (graduation of tones) done using the brushpen.

A great set of water brushpens may be obtained online here:

Drawing #1 - portrait with brush pen

This was drawn from a photograph in a Monologue sketchbook using a brushpen I bought from Daiso in Malaysia. Unfortunately, the ink appears to be waterproof so I was not able to smudge the ink with my water brushpen. The drawing took about 15 minutes.

A nice black brushpen may be obtained from here: