Light Skin

The ultimate challenge for a picture drawn with a ballpoint pen – trying to depict smooth, pale skin tones! Hatching is necessary to reduce the intensity of the colour, but that tends to undermine the smoothness. Adding additional colours to approximate the desired overall hue just compounds the problem. The easiest solution is to ignore the real colour and focus on a mood-producing colour like a sad blue or a feminine pink. Aiming for accurate colour is challenging. I always like to accentuate the shape of the surfaces, so the picture needs to be fairly dark to show off the bright spots, but I didn’t want to lose the impression of pale skin so quite a delicate balancing act was required.

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I am a Sydney based graphic designer that likes to draw faces. I started drawing pencil portraits when I was twelve but these were difficult to print because pencil isn’t dark enough to scan well, so I changed to biro for my portraits and that was my favourite medium for a long time. I mainly do commission portraits, but this tends to be limited by the quality of the photos that people submit to me. I much prefer to take the photos myself so I can set up the lighting, but this is not always possible.
Coming from a drawing background, I was always disappointed that my pictures didn’t have the gravity of a photograph. As a result, I pushed my pictures darker and darker. This allowed me to discover the highlights and sparkles that give photographs a lot of their liveliness, so I have searched for these aspects in my pictures ever since.
When I retired, I began teaching art classes. This forced me to expand my capabilities into colour so that I can give my students some guidance. I started with hard pastels which allowed me to maintain my drawing style and it allowed me to use coloured paper so I could bypass all the work of filling in the midtones and just concentrate on the shadows and reflections. My students were more interested in watercolour painting than drawing, so I had to develop some skills in that area so I could help them develop their skills. I still prefer dry media so I know exactly what I am creating, rather than having to wait for the medium to dry to know what it actually will look like, but now I have some understanding of other styles.
COVID put an end to our art classes, but recently I have joined a group at my local library that brings together a diverse range of artistic interests and people of varying ages. This has exposed me to more new media and to different approaches. I have been experimenting with these new media and discovering new capabilities. Trying to integrate ideas of pure design, calligraphy, mandalas, anime, and cartoon characters into my normal style has rekindled my excitement for art.