At the moment I am taking a pen and ink course from Wendy Mould where she is teaching us the art of pen and ink with watercolours. I’m enjoying the class, but for a different reason than I thought I would.
Just for background, I am a little bit of a control freak. The second class in, we were drawing “whimsical” homes and adding splashes of colour. It was fun, but from a control freak’s point of view it was also a challenge. Normally I like things to be realistic and the colour that goes on after has to match. These houses were from Wendy’s imagination; we were adding stuff here and there (check out the random clothes line) and splashing colour on afterward. The whole exercise was very liberating and so much fun.
The results were different from drawings that I normally do, but my son said it was “sick” so I was well pleased.
During the week, when I was doing some pen and ink by myself I reverted back to my more control freak mode and the piece didn’t have the same appeal. It is going to take some practice to let go of old habits!
Working on the whimsical,
Roberta
Week Three of the course we completed some trees from Wendy’s reference photo. In this drawing we began with the colour and added pen afterward.
Below is the final week’s work. We started with pen and ink and added colour after. I much prefer this method as it allows me to feel more in control.
Roberta Anderson 
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