Watercolours & Ink Drawings

When I have time I really enjoy sitting down and creating these ink drawings. I sketch each one out first very lightly with a hard pencil and then use a number of different sized rotring pens to draw the outline and dots to create the shading and patterns. I choose to draw on a very white printing pater which has a coating on one side as this stops the ink from soaking in and blurring the lines. My all-time favourite line art artist is of course Aubrey Beardsley who revolutionised book illustrations with his stunning creations.

These watercolours were created by first lightly sketching out the rough design and then painting in all the details. Once the paper is fully dry I have used a very thin bic biro to draw the outline and the hatch shading. I love drawing with a biro but the ink can smudge very easily so I always cover the paper I’m leaning on with a piece of tissue. I have used watercolour paints since being small and I love the different affects you can create with them.

The artist Simon Bisley another ground breaking illustrator from more modern times has always been a huge inspiration to me. I spent many hours as a teenager studying his beautiful works and my favourite was Slaine the horned god which was first featured in 2000AD and went on to be graphic novels in their own right. Check out his work if you’re unfamiliar with his work.

I wanted to try create watercolour copies of my ink drawings and after some research discovered that you cannot get Giclee prints made onto watercolour paper. So here I have photocopied my prints onto a thin water colour paper which would go through my copier. I then painted in the details on top. I’m really pleased with the results and would like to explore this technique further in the future.