My daughter in blue

I posted a picture of my daughter in a jumble of different coloured clothes back in November, but I didn’t show you a second picture of her that I painted a few days later.

That’s because I decided to give one picture to each set of her grandparents for Christmas. This one went to my own parents, who follow this blog, so I couldn’t put it up.

Now Christmas is over, I notice that I never scanned the original. Never mind, though – I still have the pencil drawing, and I put a photo of the finished piece on Instagram (which is what you see above).

Thanks to my lightbox, I can draw the original in pencil, then trace over it on a fresh piece of paper in ink. That means you don’t have to start again right from the beginning if anything goes wrong with the inking.

Personally, I really like having these little safety nets. It means that while you’re pencilling, you can tell yourself, ‘oh well, it’s just the pencil, not the finished thing’, and when you’re inking/colouring, you feel like the hard work – proportions, composition, etc – has already been done.

And, of course, it means you get to keep the pencil drawing – in theory, I suppose, I could do more coloured pieces from it. I like it the way it is, though.

Lots of artists complain that the inked version is never as lively and free as the original pencil. I struggle with being lively and free at all, to be quite honest, but yes, I can see the pencil piece is a tiny bit more carefree.