Drawings with 50 strokes of the brush :\

Many, many years ago, as a young graphic artist working in an ad agency doing line art, I fell in love with the usual heroes: Durer, Hokusai, etc. I particularly loved Hokusai's crane drawings with one stroke of the brush.

Flash forward to yesterday, and I'm messing about with my Windows Surface Pro ink stylus, with a new app called Bamboo Paper (made by the folks at Wacom who know a thing or two about inking). Well, the pressure effect between the Surface screen and the Bamboo app was pretty great, so naturally I decided I would try to do a one-stroke drawing. Of course, it was super easy and worked out perfectly the first time! (I gave up on the one-stroke bit quite soon after I started)

The drawing was inspired by a one of my favorite photos: Elspeth Beard, the first British woman to ride her motorbike (an old BMW boxer!) around the entire globe, pulled over to chug warm water in a smoking hot desert, probably in someplace that ends in -stan. I can only explain a bit of why I love the photo so much: the figure she cuts is Wonder-Woman-style bad ass AND don't-care simultaneously. And I love the romance of old adventure photos. 

Here's the actual:

I'm not sure if it's wise to try to sketch one's favorite photo, but there you have it. The brush app worked great, anyway :D more to come, as it was fun!