Al Fresco Art Club Day, July 5, 2020: Ink and Watercolor

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Today was the fifty-eighth consecutive Sunday meeting of our Al Fresco Art Club. We’ve been meeting every week, through thick and then, through good times and hard times. Each week one of us will pose a challenge that will give a nudge to our comfort zone. I chose the challenge this week: make some ink drawings and color them. I sketched and inked four small self-portraits and used some simple pastel washes.

I started by dividing a sheet of mix media paper into four boxes. I used a reference photo and tried to draw a recognizable likeness in each box. Next I inked the sketch, erased the graphite, and laid in the colors. For the skin tone I used a mix of yellow ochre and alizarin crimson. Alizarin crimson is a fugitive color, but it will live on as a permanent color until the end of digital time.