Starman...

Mr Ziggy Stardust (the second) celebrates his twelfth birthday soon and I wanted to capture some of the softer, faded appearance he's taken on over the past couple of years. It's been a while since I've drawn like this, I used to do animal portraits all the time (why!?) but this is the first I think I've ever done in ballpoint. I could have taken it further but I like a drawing to look like a drawing, even when the level of detail needs to be realistic. I don't often give out advice on drawing, I'm no expert and I can't explain how I do it anyway, but one thing I do say is if you want it to be perfect, take a photo instead. Something should be like you after you take your hands away...

The new black...

I've recently made a life changing discovery in the form a new type of black "material" (I think it's paint but I'm not entirely sure) called, well, Black. You may or may not be aware of an ongoing feud between artists Stuart Semple and Anish Kapoor. Anish developed Vantablack, the blackest pigment known to earth aside from the space between stars, Stuart thinks Anish ought to share it and to cut a long story short, ended up inventing his own. Which is incredibly black and has just about saved my hands and my sanity! You can read about the full extent of this madness HERE. 

This little experimental sketch is made using version 2.0 but I also upgraded some of the black skies in my older drawings using the beta version (you can see some of those HERE along with some of the other stuff I've been up to lately). The space between stars coloured with the colour of the space between stars... #sharetheblack

Sentinel 2017, ballpoint pen, acrylic ink and Black v2.0 on paper