Left: Quick portrait sketch, from a 19th Century photograph. Faber Castel Pitt Artists Brush Pen and some light washes of Lukas gouache. The journal is about 8 inches square and I turned it on its side to work vertically. The journal is made with Folio paper, which is a printmaking paper, not a watercolor paper. Click on the image to view an enlargement.

Last week I wanted to practice drawing people, something I don’t do often, frankly I’m more interested in birds. One evening I was up late and I burned through some quick portraits that I am going to write about as a four-part series this week. (Four parts because I wanted to break it down in to smaller chunks for people who stop by every day! Thank you!)

I’ve written before about perfectionism and how that stops people from being productive. I’ve encouraged journal keepers all my life to just get things down on paper and then consider them and move on. We learn things through the practice of keeping a visual journal. One of the most valuable lessons we learn is how the materials we choose to work with actually work. You learn this in a less pressured environment than if you were making a final painting. And we also learn how to push things and how far to push things.

The “think method” advocated by the "Music Man" doesn’t work well when mastering sketching and painting. You actually need to put pen to paper, and brush to paper.