The urge to pick up a pencil and make something has followed me since my earliest memories. At university I spent equal time in studios to those hours found in computer science labs, to the great consternation of my mother.

This ultimately led me to a long time fascination with sketching digital portraits in Photoshop.

I was delighted to discover that it took little more than a hard-edged round paintbrush to create something similar to my natural pencil process; varying opacity and line thickness with tablet stylus pressure allowed me to build up tone as intuitively as graphite on paper.

In this unfinished sketch working from a stock photo, you can see all the phases of the process: rough color blocking along the right ear, refinement along the left ear and lips, and ultimately tone and blending across the remainder of the portrait. Aside from a few small highlights, the palette at the corners (placed for reference and convenience) shows the only colors used.

Time and circumstance forced me to part ways with the cumbersome Cintiq that I drew with. But the pull remains, and I foresee a deep-dive into Procreate in my future.