Cat portrait in pen

It has been a good weekend. I have done quite a bit of drawing. Something I've needed to do for a long time. When I moved from the Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape to Johannesburg 3 years ago, I was 'adopted' by a big ginger tom cat named Nugget. I found out who he actually belonged to, but he wanted to live with me. I officially adopted him from his original owner last year. I have taken hundreds of photos of Nugget, and today I completed this portrait of him using coloured ballpoint pens.

This year I adopted a young abandoned female cat (Abby), so now I have two beautiful cats to keep me company.

Breaking through creative block

It has been quite a while since I've done any drawing or painting. 2015 started with me moving into a new home, then a whole lot of things kept me away from my pens, pencils and paint. My day job is doing magazine layout and design, it is a fantastic creative outlet and I currently work on three magazines.Two are published monthly and one is published every two months.

But the yearning to draw or paint is strong, and I finally sat down last night and picked up my sketchbook and coloured ballpoint pens and started drawing.

Drawing with ballpoint pens offers quite a challenge, there is no blending, no erasing, no way of correcting. Once that line is on the paper, it is there to stay. As far back as I can remember, I have been drawing faces. Drawing faces from imagination is fun, I don't always get the proportions right, and I often battle with the nose, but the point is just to draw. I find drawing from the imagination to be very therapeutic and relaxing. It is also a good way to break through my creative block.

A change in direction

For quite a while now I have been wanting to move my painting into a different direction, one that I loved as an art student; figure studies. I've had this one planned for quite a while now, and I finally got to start it recently.

I started by laying down the tonal values first and you can see the progress below.  It is quite challenging but it is slowly getting there. I will post more photos as I do some more work on it.

Putting pen to paper

Sometimes it is nice to take a break from painting and just draw without any plan in mind.  The drawing above is done in my sketchbook with ball point pens, gel pens and highlighters. And it started off as a weird doodle. I usually draw like this when I am sick or unable to sleep, and while watching TV.  They are a wonderful distraction from everything around me.

I had so much fun doing the hair in the above drawing and that led to the doodle below. I think I got a bit carried away, but it was so much fun. This one was done with my sharpies.

Drawing doodles is almost like a form of meditation, I find that I get ideas for other drawings and paintings while doing these doodles.