Peace Lily 9th of November

I’ve been prone to using ballpoint pens rather than pencils for sketching for the last few years, so I didn’t really consider other alternatives when starting this exercise. Using pens make me commit faster to a design and there is less opportunity for fixing mistakes. I almost always get some of the proportions wrong when doing these sketches, but I just have to accept that when drawing with pens and try to do better next time rather than fussing over a single drawing. So I guess I like sketching with pens because it speeds things up and I’m not second-guessing myself as I do when drawing digitally or with pencils. Another advantage over pencil sketches is that the drawings don’t smudge and I don’t have to be so careful when storing or looking through a pile of sketches like that one I have for this project.

The kind of ballpoints I use are not as final as for example drawing with markers though, and maybe that is something I will experiment more with later. I tested a few different brands when I first started sketching with pens, but so far I’ve found that the cheap Bic Cristal pens is just as good, and in some cases better, than the more expensive alternatives.