Binge-watching HBO’s “Silicon Valley” and sketching my impression of Pied Piper CEO Richard Hendricks.

I’m getting the hang of using watercolor to spice up ink drawings, so today I thought I’d challenge myself by rendering a small river scene solely in paint.

My friend complimented me on this sketch of the Arch in Washington Square Park yesterday. I shrugged and said, “it’s just a sketch.” But then I realized that I’ve probably drawn the thing about a dozen times, and each time I’ve captured it a little bit better. A dozen sketches from now, I’ll be embarrassed about this one. Progress is always good. Bonus park denizen. Aside from practice, which I don’t do often enough, credit is due to Marc Taro Holmes’ awesome book, The Urban Sketcher, as well as his video course on Craftsy.

Here’s a quiz, did I use real ink and digital watercolor, or real watercolor and digital ink?

Here’s another one from Friday. I was pretty happy with it until I stupidly tried to add some ink to the guy’s left hand, which was still wet with watercolor, resulting in a big black splotch. Oh sure, for blog-posting purposes I could fix it digitally, but instead I carved out most of the ink with an X-Acto knife, covered it with a little white-out, then tried to add a little color.