2pac. Pen, 2018.

This is a pen sketch of 2pac I made during my final days while living in Dubai. I’ve always been most comfortable with pencil since that’s the medium I used most growing up. But what I noticed is that I’d developed a dependency on my eraser. I was afraid to ‘commit’ to my strokes.

So, I started doing little drawings like this one where I only used pen. That way I wouldn’t be able to erase and I would just have to find a way forward, even if I made a 'mistake’. I think that is really good training for anyone who wants to level up their drawing skills.

Instead of going straight to black, I started with a yellow pen. I felt like this was a great way to set down a rough sketch for the piece. That way, I had guidelines and a bit of a compositional frame that I could use when applying black pen when the stakes were higher.

As you can see, I’d misjudged the size of the head in my initial sketch. Regardless, I actually thought the end result was quite cool. The yellow adds some dimension and a nice pop to the black.

This technique is actually how I prefer to do sketches nowadays. Another really fun combo is working with light grey, dark grey, and black – it’s like pencil in that it’s monochromatic, but with all the best aspects of pen.