Inking Practice and Memorized Art

Above right is the preliminary sketch.  Above left is the final inked drawing.  I never got the hang of inking, which is probably why I hate doing it.  The linework here is a little better than my usual, but it's still jittery, and the transitions from thick to thin are awkward.  I wish I knew how to make it look right.  Maybe if I sit down and ape Al Hirschfeld for a week it'll sink in. 

Anyway, today's drawing is my default attractive female face.  If I'm hanging around a bunch of other artists for an art jam, this is the one I whip out to make them say "look he can draw a pretty girl!"  Drawing a pretty girl automatically gets attention.  And this girl is different from my other drawings.  It's a mindless, memorized sketch that I can whip out on command in minutes, if not seconds(I'm refering to the sketch on the right, not the finished linework on the left, which could easily take another thirty minutes or more).  If I'm having a really bad art day, I sketch this out to make myself feel better. 

In general, I prefer drawing with construction lines because it forces me to use my brain to solve forms.  Memorized sketches like the one above teach me nothing, but it's nice to have a library of them on hand when I need to make something look good in a hurry.

Anyway I finished moving in to my new apartment recently.  And the first thing I want to say about that is WHAT A PAIN IN THE ASS.  Moving is a PAIN IN THE ASS.  Just had to get that off my chest.  I found my digital pen a couple of days ago, after scrounging around for WEEKS.  Almost had to buy a whole new tablet, which would've been another $400 bucks down the drain, but thank god I found the pen.  Before the move I even said to myself "John, you better not lose this god damn pen", so I put it in a safe place where I'd NEVER FIND IT.  Brilliant.

But now I'm back.  But not back to normal.  At least I can draw a little, but it's gonna be sporadic until I get one last thing settled, which I'll talk about when the time is right.