Kat Johnston

Tag: red

  • Sketch: Just a quick sketch for today… I’m working on something cute.

    Kat Johnston - a quick scribble portrait in red today. I'm doing up something cool for the site, so this is all today!

    I’ve been working on something incredibly cute for the past day, so I’m going to put up this for now, and save the extra cuteness for later!

    Here… let me give you a hint. It involves a legendary mythical creature, cuteness, scissors and something I’ve already shown at least once on the site.

    Buuuut for today… just a little red scribble-portrait. As I’ve mentioned before, I enjoy playing with different pens and things – a scribble portrait in a traditional ball-point pen is always going to have a different feel from something done in a bright red ink pen. I find it incredible just how much the medium can affect the outcome.

    That’s all for today – there’s cute stuff on the horizon!

  • Testing the red… slightly disappointed.

    Kat Johnston Sketch – I’m testing out the red pen today.

    I must admit, when it comes to red pens, I adore a nice, deep, rich, blood-red shade. This shade? Welllll… not quite what I love. It is nice and all, don’t get me wrong, but not the perfect colour of red I crave.

    I find it rather funny just how much the colour of a pen can influence just how I draw with it. The colour, the flow, the amount of variation I can get between one pen and the next… I do the majority of my sketching in pens. I enjoy them so much. If you screw up, you screw up – you either start over or try to salvage it, and either way it will eventually turn out ok, or at the very least, you have one more picture to toss onto the ‘maybe not’ pile.

    From the bold, even distribution of colour in a picture like this, to the subtle shading and tone variation of pens with a less ‘wet’ ink, I am constantly delighted by the amount of ways that this simple stationary item so often passed over can transform a simple sheet of paper into something stunning, or evocative, or playful, or sweet… I’m sure I’m not the only one that starts clapping their hand delightedly on the way to a big stationary shop, am I?