Frank's Sketchbook Entry of the Day

Having finished a few projects (some photos and a cartoon that sat around for a while), I wanted to do a quick drawing. And I haven't drawn any white-on-black images in a while. On a random Internet rabbit hole (looking up Tori Amos after hearing a song of hers on the radio, which mentioned singers influenced by her, which mentioned Amy Lee, who I knew nothing about), I happened to come across this picture of the lead singer from Evanescence. The black background, strong lines and shapes made me think it be a good candidate for a quick drawing in my black paper notebook with the white in gelly roll pens. I kept that web browser tab open for a couple days to remind me.

So using that image as a reference, I sketched it with the thin white ink pen and filled it in with the thicker ones. I used the reference image as is&mdahs;I didn't change it to a monochrome image this time. I think that's the first time I just used my eyes to do the thresholding.

I did a little bit of cleanup with a normal black in gel pen, and then decided it was good or at least good enough, and scanned it in, rotated it so to straighten it out, and crop it. Then I uploaded it and posted it quickly, so I could credit it still to Wednesday night. (My posting program lets me specify the date if I want, but that'd be cheating. And from the RSS feed, it looks like it posted 2 seconds after midnight. Oh well.) I think the forehead is one of the better parts and the minimal suggestion of (dark) hair works.

I am editing this text a few minutes after midnight but the drawing took under an hour, probably 30-45 minutes. So it was quite fast for me. I took some liberties, for example the mouth isn't right and I didn't spend much time on the fabric folds by her stomach. The pose isn't a perfect match, but it's in the neighborhood, and she's recognizable as being a human. So I look at that as success.

I know almost nothing about the group, though I've heard a few of their songs. It was just the picture that caught my eye. Here's the full resolution version of my picture.