Let’s Get Grooming!

Just a quick and easy sketch I wanted to share here! With the pandemic almost the thing of the past, we can safely go back to our normal lives again. Remember those days when everything was shut down during the lockdown? Hairdressers and beauty salons too! And of course, as we had nowhere to go, we didn’t bother dressing up or get ready to go anywhere. Now that those days are over, some of us like myself are relishing on grooming in full gear! I, for one, resumed my monthly routine of getting my brows shaped, threaded and tinted last summer. And then I discovered gel nails too! The other day, I decided to have some fun and choose fluorescent pink, and I’m loving it! So why not sketch about the new me?

Charcoal Drawing

So let’s start with a basic sketch. It has been some time since using some colored paper apart from white or black. Enter some tanned paper! Here we have a page from Strathmore’s Toned Tan sketchbook on which I scribbled with some black charcoal pencil. I didn’t add too much detail as I was intending to color it in later. And what a cute portrait! The hands are of course round and pudgy but I figured that goes well with the image, keeping it all kawaii and chibi.

Getting Colored.

Now let’s get coloring! Pastel mediums seemed a logical choice for this in conjunction with charcoal sketches. I used both hard and soft pastel sticks and this time no Pan Pastel, as I wanted to keep the painting sketchy and simple. The brown-scale set of Cretacolor Hard Pastels was perfect for hair and eyes. For the eyes, I used a cotton bud for blending. Only a bit of color was applied for the skin as the tan paper provides a great background. And finally the nails! I love that pink from the fluorescent colors range of Koh-I-Noor’s Brilliant Soft Pastels. Wow, that turned out quite cool!

Great to go back to the basics! As I’ve been more focussed on painting lately, I don’t get to do much sketches unfortunately. It is good to have a change now and again to refresh our skills. I also love working with the combination of black charcoals, white chalk and colored pastels. Should do that more often! Especially as we approach the warmer seasons, this is a great way to illustrate all the pretty colors. Looking forward to that! And meanwhile, isn’t it wonderful being able to get our lives back to normality?