My habit, of late, has been to find a wildlife photo and try to draw its subject... using a ballpoint pen. The other trick? I can't spend more than about 30 minutes on it.
There are people who are brilliant at drawing with pens. I'm not one of them. I like them because they don't smudge (well they do, a little, if you dampen them... see the crow from my last post). But they do nothing for my self-esteem.
On the other hand, they're really easy to critique because none of the lines go away. I got the owl's beak all wrong, for instance. And the swift's shading isn't all that. Easy to see once you step away for a minute.
