I did my first upside down drawing following instructions in Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It was a line drawing by Picasso named Portrait of Igor Stravinsky. I liked what it looked like and that encouraged me to proceed with the other exercises and my drawing and confidence improved. We moved cities whilst I was in the midst of working on these exercises. This was in mid 2004. We eventually settled down in an apartment of our own some 10 months later and by then I’d moved on.
After viewing two fellow EDMers’ (Penny Hackett-Evans and Joyce of Draw Daily ) posts where they had displayed their portraits attempts in Danny Gregory’s style, I knew right away that I was going to be joining them. Both mentioned his recent post with a demo video showing him making a portrait. In it you can see him draw a portrait with a Koh-in-noor Rapidograph and then fill it in with a wash of Sumi Ink all the while keeping his sketchbook upside down. It was very exciting and inspiring watching him draw. After which I immediately set off to make mine. This is my attempt.
Andrew Wyeth is the chosen Master for the months of Mar/April in project over at WetCanvas!. I had been downloading images of him and his work last night. I grabbed one of his photos turned it to black & white, increased the contrast and rotated it till it was upside down. Turned my sketchbook upside down too and started drawing with my 0.7 Rotring Isograph. I think a 0.3 was recommended but I dont have one. The drawing was like a semi-blind contour as that is what i’d spent a good half an hour doing, last night. I finally broke open a large sealed bottle of Chinese Ink bought in 2000! Seems to be working fine though it pongs quite a bit. I find that the portrait is much narrower than the reference I used and doesnt look like Andrew Wyeth but I still liked it and so did my husband and so here it is! I’m now planning to make the same portrait right side up 
8″X10″ Pen & Ink wash in my sketchbook
Reference used for the above drawing – Photograph copyright Jim Graham
6 Comments
This is wonderful! And it sounded like you had a good time working on it, too. Beautiful job.
Absolutely fabulous …love it!
You did a great job! Really looks like Wyeth…
I had fun and it was quick than had it been right side up
thank you very much for your comments.
Wow, you did a wonderful job! It’s a pretty neat technique isn’t it?!
thanks joyce
and i want to do many more. would like to use more of the chinese ink too.
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[...] photographs of the artist available online and he makes a very interesting subject himself! The first one has been made by turning the reference upside down. The second one was started yesterday in Art [...]
[...] Just the first wash layer has been put in. And this morning [wonder of wonders!] I made another upside down Pen & Ink drawing. I used brown ink in the Rotring and black drawing ink for the wash. It [...]