Book impression: “Everyday Sketching and Drawing” by Steven Reddy

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I bought up this book at Barnes and Noble yesterday — even though I’ve exceeded my book budget for the month. When I opened Everyday Sketching and Drawing It was love at first sight…every drawing in pen and ink. Pen and ink is my native style, the style I’m eternally ignoring while I search for my “real style”, which mostly means trying to draw/paint/sketch like someone else. My wife keeps telling me that pen and ink is really me and I keep thinking that I should be painting digitally and traditionally like the “real” artists I see on Youtube. That’s a real problem. I must look like I’m eternally falling down rabbit holes.

Then I find this book, and it talks to me. Steven Reddy’s style is pen-and-ink with grisaille and watercolor wash. Wow! I love it. One of the treasures in the book is a sketch of R Crumb, one of my pen-and-ink idol ever since I went into a comic book store on Haight street in 196? and bought my first stunning Zap comics. My other big idol is Wally Wood in his Mad Magazine days. Black and white, pen and ink…it doesn’t get any better.

My favorite quote from the book comes when Reddy is writing about drawing his partner. It’s easy to see that she looks obviously different in every drawing:

Creating a faithful likeness would take much longer than I want to spend on any drawing. (p. 138)

I admire the sentiment, and I’m inspired by it.

There you see the thumbnail of an ink-stained dip pen wretch.

Cartoon bird expressions

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I’ve been thinking that my characters need expressions that show them laughing, smiling, surprised, and being sad. I have two references for facial expressions: Jack Hamm’s Cartooning the Head & Figure and Gary Faigin’s The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression. The former is super corny, old-fashioned cartoon-style, which you’d expect from Jack Hamm, who worked on Bugs Bunny back in the day. Guide to Facial Expression is super-advanced with deep analysis of the muscles involved in the expressions we humans can show. At this stage of my artistic development I went with Cartooning the Head & Figure.

The problem I ran into was that Jimmy Jay is 5-years old and all of my expressions came out looking adult. Solution: more practice with attention given to keeping Jimmy Jay from prematurely aging. On the bright side, some of these expressions will work for his mother.

Jimmy’s 5 o’clock shadow makes him look a little down-and-out.

Caran D'Ache Neocolor II water-soluble wax pastels as watercolor

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I’ve bought a lot of art supplies in the last 2 years. Yesterday I pulled my Caran D’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble was pastels out of the pantry. There are 40 colors in this set. The larger 84-color set is great, too — it just costs more.

Recently I’ve noticed that I’m feeling some frustration with watercolors. Then I got to thinking that applying color with wax pastels and adding water would be a quick-and-easy way to color characters. These wax pastels are artist’s quality and lay down considerable pigment. They wet easily and can produce deep, saturated colors.

For small figures I can see them working fine, but if I have to mix colors, maybe they’re an awkward solution. And I don’t see them as practical for big washes. Those gotchas aside, I think they look really good.

Caran D'ache neocolor II was pastels used for watercolor

Muji and Copic Markers work together

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I intend to do pen and wash drawings for my children’s book and I’m waffling between watercolor or markers. I use Muji gel ink pens for my sketches. Muji pens are silky and always deliver a great line…and they’re only about $1.10 each. However, when I apply a wash, there’s noticeable bleeding if I slather on the water when I’m impatient.

With alcohol-based markers such as those made by Copic, the ink lines don’t bleed at all. I have an awesome collection of Copic markers that’s been gathering dust for ages and I have an equally awesome collection of watercolor gear that I haven’t used since the 2017 Inktober.

Muji 0.38mm gel ink pen and Copic markers

Muji 0.38mm gel ink pen and watercolor


These two mother Steller’s Jays are the same character but they don’t resemble each other at all. In fact, they don’t resemble a Steller’s Jay in any way. That’s okay because these characters aren’t really like the garden variety Steller’s Jays that dig up my flowerbeds. Still, for my own sake I have to create a “look book” for my story’s characters just so I’ll have a way to remember to draw them the same every time they appear. I’ll post the look book here when I’ve completed it. It’s already on my project mind map, which is another reminder to me to keep focussed and on track.