Going grayscale


I´ve been busy busy busy at work the last few weeks, as always when a new semester starts up. This means, of course, a bit less time for drawing right now, but I try to do some little thing almost every day.

I drew this guy yesterday when I was in town to run an errand. He stands there every day, all day long, holding a sign pointing to a restaurant situated in a back street off one of the main shopping streets in Stockholm. I wonder what perception of time a guy gets after standing there for a few weeks? I´d go crazy, but I guess there must be tricks to get through the day with a job like this… The drawing would have been just about 100 % more interesting if I had included his sign, but unfortunately there was already a drawing on the sketchbook page, right above this one, so I skipped it.

I decided to use the drawing anyway to make some value studies. I scanned it and printed out four copies and tried out a few different solutions with five Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils, ranging from black to very light gray. I´m way out of my comfort zone with coloured pencils, it´s been years since I´ve used any. Bought a bunch of Polychromos a while ago to give them a try, and I like them, as long as I don´t have to use them every day.

The original sketch contains no shadows or colours at all, which gave me the freedom to try any solution I wanted. Very interesting way to work, I think I´ll have to experiment with this some more.

7 x 10 cm, Lamy Safari with Lexington Gray (scanned and printed four times), coloured with Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils.

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