The Process of Sketching

While creating my recent series of oil paintings suddenly I felt it was time to have a new model session. It was some time ago and that resulted in a lovely pastel of Julia Filament. After the latest and hopefully last lockdown I did only oils. However, I missed my regular model and it was fun to have another live drawing session with her again. The last one resulted in her pose as a Tribute to Alma Tadema. My mind was not on doing an elaborate theme in pencil though, only the process of sketching. Even though my main objective is to put my drawings into oils the process of drawing is fun. It’s an inner urge I simply cannot resist.

My Mechanical Pen

This time, after a photo shoot, I decided to take a bigger pencil. That was a Winsor & Newton 4B one and its strokes are way bigger than I am used to lay. For years now I am sketching with a Sakura 0.5 mm, 4B. Not really handy for live model sketching but I usually do these sessions in pastel. Sometimes it’s great to keep a rougher edge to your drawings rather than to finetune it all. That is how I started out but I was not satisfied yet. Live sketching usually is for practising your hands and sharpening your mind. So was this graphite pencil drawing intented. After some time I saw the potential to work it out more properly though. And so it happened that I took up my mechanical pencil once again.

A Full Array of Values

I was attracted by a full array of tonal values, all slightly differing. They extend from her head to the lower parts of her body. In the right lower corner I simply erased back the highlights on the folds of the sheet. The rougher sketchwork still is visible in the upper left corner, in the cushion to be precise. Perhaps I will do another one but this time in my roundistic style. I don’t know. First return to oil.

Click here to read about the sale of a print (greeting card) to an English collector.

Graphite pencil drawing (Sakura 0.5 mm, 4B) on Canson Bristol board paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm – A4 format)

Artist: Corné Akkers

Sales info: info@corneakkers.com