SAA Archives | Working Upside Down with Jo Allsopp

Hello, it's Jo Walsop here. I'm going to be doing a scruffy hair and the technique and tips I'm going to show you is how to turn your work upside down. So I'm going to get started the right way up just to prove that we can start our drawing, get lost in detail and so by turning it a different angle, i.e upside down, we can reassess the situation and therefore put things right. So just starting with the ear, just going to draw a shape, I can see a long oval. Okay, so just scribble that in, get that shape in and then start coming down ready for his face. Going over to the other ear, scribbling that in with this water soluble, it's a Stabilo and it's going to dissipate when I wash it, so I'll get these beautiful tones off it to get a little bit more values on this rather than just line. We'll have a little bit of line and wash, just do some scribbles off there. Now before we go any further, one ear, one face, one ear, one face, one ear, one face to the bottom there and then we've got a bulbous part there where his eye socket is and here this eye has got a gap at the side of it, so I'm just moving that over slightly. That's on the end, that one isn't, so I've just put the markers in ready. Coming down, we've got to go down to here, so I've got to make sure that we do a cheeky chops and curve it round slightly, that's the head and that's not where the mouth is, obviously to there, is the mouth in here somewhere and the nose and because he's at an angle, we've got to make sure that we move the nose over to where it is, so he's got loads of cheek one side, no cheek that side, little gap at the eye side there but not on that one, you can only see one little curve that way, so we're coming into the chin here and then back out with the pen. Make sure you get all the dark bits in ready, so if it's going to be really black in areas, you need to apply really black with the pen, so you're going over, you're scribbling over and over and you're re-emphasising those black bits, so we'll pretend that we're further down, we are further down but we're going to turn it upside down so that we can see where we're going, so I've thrown a shape out there, a curve and then we'll do some grasses and flowers off. Now what I'm going to do is got a little bit of his leg coming down, I'm not sure you could guide up to his cheek, down to his leg, cheek to the leg like that, so then cheek to the leg and it's coming over this way a little bit as if he's sat in the grass, which he is, grass and flowers and I'll do three, one, scrubby flowers, two, very very scruffy and we've got another one going off and away up there into this corner, a few little spots on it, okay so we're having a look, he needs something going on here, so this is where after five minutes, 20 minutes you might have got lost in the details, so what I'm suggesting and I often suggest to my students is turn it upside down or turn it side on and just reassess the situation, so turning that upside down, back in place and then of course turning your piece that you're working from upside down as well. Now I can completely see certain shapes that I weren't able to see before because I was getting lost in the detail of where the eyes were, so now I'm going to look at the situation and just identify shapes, I'm not looking at a face anymore to be fair, I'm looking at dark areas, scribbly areas, dark areas, furry on his back, much darker, so I can do that down here, I can see loads more dark, just gives you another perspective, you spot things by doing upside down that you wouldn't spot the right way up necessarily, so it just gives the eye that fresh, it's a fresh eye, just basically sometimes you can go around somebody's work and you can spot something straight away because you've got that fresh eye and I think this does the same thing, it's just looking at it completely differently with that fresh eye, new shape, so I'm just going to re-emphasise all those bits that I'm seeing under the chin, it's quite dark, putting all these furry bits and really around what's his face obviously, his nose, his eyes, his cheeks, all of that, I'm looking at the shapes and the depths of the the pen that I need to get in, so just really if you can't see the detail you can't draw it, but having said that if you see half a shape of an eye and a full eye, that's what you need to draw because he's at an angle, so I need to look at this, I can actually see from here that this needs to come out a little bit, it goes in too far so if I just add that little touch more, the eye, I've got to be careful that I don't do too much detail because it's just a semi-circle if you like with eyelashes, there's dark areas up on his fur here and then the eye is obviously we've got to leave the gap, so we see that shape, it might be an oval, might be a circle, whatever you see with the gap, that's what we're going to draw, I'm just putting in the shape and I can do little bits of detail when I get in the right way up, so really emphasise dark, I can see there, okay, dark here, dark, dark, scribble over his back, just make sure we've got those, we've got his leg in and it gives me a better way of seeing it, sometimes because they're laminated, a lot of my pieces are laminated, I invite the learners to draw over it or just feel that shape like that and then replicate that feel over to your piece of work and you'll get that in, okay, so I think to be fair if I throw some whiskers in different directions and they have loads of eyelashes, I would choose to do some of those, let's do some of those with the micron, now that's water soluble, okay and this is not, so this is one that will resist the water because what I want is when I turn it the right way up, I'm going to just wash the pen and move it around to get these different tonal values, but there are elements of this that I won't want to move, I'm not going to do my signature upside down, that won't work at all, however, I can do some whiskers that won't move when I wet this piece of work because this is the permanent pen, okay, so I can definitely get the detail in now knowing that there are certain things that will move but certain things I don't want to move, so I'm giving him some little spots, I can do some more spots up here, some will move like that but these ones, if I do it with a different pen, they're not going to move but as well, rather than just do this different pen up the top end, we clearly need to ensure that we push it in elsewhere so that we've got some little pieces that stay, okay, so working upside down and sometimes it's easier to get the flow of that pen for grasses or whatever else it is in that direction, we can work one way and then it's better to turn it upside down to work another. I'm going to go the right way, look at him and we can see again because we've got the fresh eye, we've worked one way, we work the other way, you might spot just a couple of other bits before we do this pen and wash it so we've got more eyelashes, re-emphasize that ball of the eye there, there isn't much to see and get this a better shape, okay, so looking at it this way on again now, we can just draw the other bits in, get that little bit of detail in, more whiskers and then we're going to move it around and get some tones into there because that makes a big difference, a little bit more with the water soluble just to make sure that we've got enough black, push the black up under his chin, around his nose, certainly over the eye so some of these pen marks will move, some will not move, obviously we've got a bit of both so it's going to be an element of surprise to a degree and notice that I'm drawing with a pen, I think this is great to get your confidence up because then when we go back to the pencil it's so much easier because we've worked so hard by not being able to rub out so I'm having to make, you know, any mistakes, I'm having to make the new lines over the top and you know, obviously we're going to see some of those lines, it just loosens you up a little bit, right, he's really, really scruffy, isn't he, deserves his name, top of the head, a bit dark on there and I think we're ready just to mix him up, all I'm going to do now is put the water on him, there we go, finished, in fact we'll just sign it because you never know and we've got to do that with the other pen, we don't want that running and straight away as soon as that's air dried you can start using your water and your brushes, now you might for the larger areas use the big, big brush so I'll start with that and all I'm going to do is just move this around, I'm going to leave lots of white and do these grasses, look, just mix that pen with the water and just get those shapes in, so it might be again some of the detail, I'm going to reassess, turn him upside down again just to see where these dark shapes have got to go, where I've got to mess about a little bit, where I've got to push a little bit out, so even though I've done the pen there I can actually get his body going further over by stretching this way rather than keeping it on the inside, what I mean is by getting, using that that's there and making a new body even over there like that so that he's completely quite a bit bigger, wider by using that, I don't have to disturb that little bit but I disturbed on the outside and took it that way, I'll just continue these little spots, little area here, that bit there, be careful because we want to leave lots of white, that's making the shape of his face, a little bit under the chin and then using the finer brush we can start pulling, help it along, wet the brush so that that flood of wet and the black we can pull those out, similarly that way, that way we can pull some that you see in all these grasses look, by using the different brushes, different thicknesses of the brush ends we can get these grasses in look, curve of the body there look, so I can just disturb that and I'm seeing black and then we've got blobs on his face so it's literally not a drawn perfect hair's face, I can just see blobs so I'm just going to mess up that area and it's really untidy but it's just blobs and shapes, blobs and shapes, using this fine brush again whilst it's wet is pulling some of those out, the whiskers using that, taking some of them different directions and then this brush is just getting these tones in, leaving the white bits because obviously he's got a big patch on his head and that's how I'm seeing it so I'm not seeing a hair, I'm just seeing a big patch, push that across, that shape going over to there, that around the eye there, a little bit of black there, we've got a big black blob there so I'll pull that like that and get it over as a blob, another big area of blob there, stretch there, across here, let's get some more water and we go around the eye now, we do need to disturb this eye a little bit so it's marbled so I'm just going to drop him a little bit of water around there, over that way, top there, have we disturbed it all? Almost, a little bit more down the bottom, got darker tones, so those areas that are scribbled, they were done early doors with that pen that's going to make these dark marks, I can see a dark mark there, dark mark there, dark mark around there, so hopefully what I've put on is enough just to do that, now you could as well, while you've got it this way, let me just put a little bit of greyscale around there, but you could while you've got the brush and the ink that's come off all of this, is just put a few little flicks of this grey, turning the right way, he looks fine, now what you can do with this, once it's the right way again, you can see areas that you might need to strengthen, so obviously with the runny pen, this is just an example of what you can do to get the shapes back, turning it side on, turning it upside down, I could apply ink now to get some detail in there, but certainly you can't use the nibs now whilst it's wet, so I'm just going to let this dry for a few minutes, I will then put some finishing touches to it and then we can show you the end result. So there's our finished scruffy hair, thank you so much for watching, I will see you all again soon.