Bargue study - Mostly ink

Whew. Finally done with it @_@.

Lol took me three days on and off to do it. Probably a total of about 10 hours. Most of the time was spent sketching out where the shading went with a 4H pencil, and inking over it very careful to make sure I didn't mess up.

Yea. Most of it was done in Ink. The outline itself was done with traditional Indian ink traced from a spoon pen, while a lot of the inside lines done were done with a Ballpoint pen I stole from a hotel I was in back in May. Additional darker lines were worked with a variety of pens, from technical pens to felt tip pens. Mostly in the inner nostril, lip, and under the statue "base" though. The shading of that was very slow, as I mentioned. Mostly it was going over it slowly, getting down a bit of grey before pressing the pen down harder for thicker lines, with eventual crosshatching in the darker spots (like the neck, and the eye). Most of the lighter shading comes all from one pen . Aside from the background, of course, which was shaded in with a 5B pencil to kind of give it a velvety appearance. While I don't think it worked, at least it kind of gives a nice contrast to all the ink.

Sorry for the bit of blue in the corner as well . Out of like 30 pictures I took of it in various different lights, this was the best in term of showing the proper shade of it in natural light. Don't know how the blue spot came about, probably a reflection from my computer case.

Also, if the neck looks really really skinny that's partly my fault, and partly because the statue I based it off of was cut off from the back of the head. I probably should have fleshed it out a bit more to look better, but I tried to stick to as much of the reference as I could. What I probably should have done was made some parts of the background darker to make it look like shadow being cast.

In any event, I hope you like it . Would love some comments and critiques on this very much.

1) Is the inking done alright? I wanted to do it originally in graphite, but thought ink would be more of a fun experiment. I think I messed up on the cheek and forehead
2) What about the shading? Are there places I could have gone darker, lighter, or reworked altogether?
3) What about details? Does it look like a statue? Enough details on the image?
If anyone has any tips for ballpoint pens or technical pens I'm more than happy to listen

and also because I'm a critique whore

---

---

Click here to create a critique!

---