Practicing Scribble Portraits – Here's How I Do It

Hello friends, today I'm going to show you one of my scribble drawing practice sessions. I bought this inexpensive marker, and I want to see what I can do with it. I wanted to try using a marker because ballpoint pens tend to have a shine when viewed under light. While the markers have a matte finish, which I think will yield better results. As always, I'm blocking in the major shadow areas; this helped me gauge the proportions of the drawing. This marker pen has slightly thinner lines compared to the marker, and I'll be using three pens for this practice. The marker pen will be used for medium lines, the marker for the boldest or thickest lines. Later, I'll use the ballpoint pen for the thinnest or lightest lines. Now I mainly use the ballpoint pen for adding light shading or softer tones. Now I'm starting the next drawing, and this time I'm using the ballpoint pen first to lay out the basic structure. I think it's better to start the shading process with a ballpoint pen that has light lines, like this one. because it's easy to draw over it. Once the overall shapes, shading, and proportions have all been established, I can start defining the shading more by adding slightly thicker lines using the gel pen. As I always say, there are no fixed rules in drawing—this is just my approach, and it works for me. But feel free to find your own style and process. These are just practice sketches; maybe I'll do around four to five stages just to see what these three pens can do. If this practice goes well, I plan to create a larger piece using the same three pens. What I like about starting with light lines is that you can sketch loosely without worrying too much. But with thick lines, you really have to be careful because too many bold strokes can be difficult to correct. I want my style to feel expressive and loose, not too rigid, but still maintain a degree of accuracy. And to be honest, that's very hard to do. For beginners, it's best to use a reference with strong shadows and just one light source. It makes things easier and often results in better drawings. I'm really happy with how it's turning out, and I'll definitely keep using these three pens and this approach in my next drawings. For this next drawing, I'm going to try a face from a more challenging angle. Let's see how it turns out. I'm definitely having a hard time with this one due to the tricky angle, but I'll do my best to make it work. It's not perfect, but it looks good enough, so I'll take it for now. So this is going to be the last one for today's practice session. Quick tip, guys: if you're having a hard time placing the eyes, try sketching something like a sunshade or a pair of eyeglasses to block in the area. You can also start by focusing on the two eye sockets first, rather than jumping straight into the details of the eyes, just as I did with this one. There's still a lot to improve, but I'm quite happy with how this turned out. I'm definitely going to keep creating more pieces using these pens and this technique. That's all for today, guys. I hope you enjoyed the drawing practice and maybe picked up something useful. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.