Village Woman

Last week, when I used ink for the first time, I ended up with THIS. This was supposed to be a practice run for our assignment, where we were supposed to work with ink to draw fabric, then add an object/print to the fabric.

Though the nagging voice at the back of my mind told me to add a complicated object to the fabric and take the challenge head on, my gut instinct was leaning me towards this idea. Whenever I started sketching, only this one image came to mind.

I did end up going with my gut instinct. This is an image of a village woman in India wearing a simple Bandhani cloth on her head. She is carrying her pot to the river.

This drawing is 28 by 14 inches on watercolour paper. I used black India Ink, a split tip pointed nib, a variety of synthetic paintbrushes, and water. Learning from my initial experience, I started with the nib pen, then mixed the water with ink and added that from light to dark (I added one drop of ink at a time to a bowl of water). I waited for this watery shading to completely dry before adding more darks and the traditional Indian Print. Luckily it dried very quickly, because I only had about 4 hours after work to start and finish this assignment

I know that it is very simple, but I was relatively happy with my one night of work :)

Edit: Due to fear of over simplicity, I asked my professor if I could take the extension that I had received earlier and redo the assignment. I will be doing that and updating the blog over the weekend. However, I do not think this village woman was a waste of time. I still kinda like it, and I got great practice with ink!