Pilgrim at Ta’er Si, in Qinghai, China 2

I couldn’t resist the temptation to color this gentle Tibetan woman…

Because I really didn’t plan to use any color, I drew her in my drawing book instead of my watercolor one and the paper buckled badly… Still, I think she looks more lovely in color.

Besides coloring on wrong paper, I also used the wrong brush. My daVinci Maestro Kolinsky travel brushes would’ve been perfect for this job, but I went for my large Niji Waterbrush instead. Well, continue learning from my mistakes.

Pilgrim at Ta’er Si, in Qinghai, China

This is based on a photo in Eyewitness Travel Guides‘ “China.” This Tibetan woman was praying at the famous Ta’er Si (塔爾寺), in Qinghai (青海), China.

I finally did “Project 3-A — Standing Figure” from Bert Dodson’s “Keys to Drawing“! My fear of figure drawing had kept me away from it, but it was about time to do something about it.

I skipped pencil and sketched directly with technical pen. As Dodson mentioned in his book early on, restating made “the drawing actually look[s] more alive and energetic”. (I was being too careful and didn’t take the full advantage of restatements. Next time I’ll be more relaxed.) The only part that I couldn’t afford this luxury was the face, so I had to lightly apply pencil sketching first.

Dodson’s instruction on finding the midpoint is right on! Even though I didn’t do the Tibetan woman justice, at least she doesn’t look funny proportional-wise.