Last night went well, even though I tried out a new paper which didn’t lend itself well to brush and ink. On the plus side, the model was very good and the lighting was perfect, so my overall output made me happy.

I thought I’d try a Canson 90 lb. paper, looking for something heavier to resist buckling and (presumably) stay wet longer in order to work with ink, but instead it tends to dry out immediately, and the tooth sucks in ink without giving it back-much quicker than the thinner sketch paper I was using. As a result, I had to really think about what I was doing before I started using water, which was good and bad—good because it made me think, bad because I started overthinking. The two sketches above were both 10 minute poses, which seemed to be the right amount of time to work before I started adding too much.

This sketch was done on bristol, which behaves much better with water and ink, and was 20 minutes long. I need to find bristol wire-bound in a larger format (11″ x 14″ seems to be the ideal size).