Here's another basketball related pen and ink portrait, this one of Amare Stoudemire of the Phoenix Suns -- one of my favourite NBA players. I was a bit more warmed up and confident in my pen technique by the time I got to this one, so I was fairly satisfied with the results. Again, as with the last one, this one was also photo-referenced from a cover of Slam Magazine.
For those who emailed and asked, I usually use a hunt 102 nib when I draw with pens, but these last two were drawn with the slightly thicker hunt 108 with a few of the darker areas done with the more flexible 103 nib. I used the 108 because I couldn't find any 102s around my studio at all -- I usually have a box of them lying around, but didn't realize I'd run out months ago. I turned my whole studio over looking for one but, sadly, there wasn't even a rusty one lying around. I think it worked out for the best though, as the thinner nib sometimes creates lines that are so fine that they don't even show up on my scanner. Anyway, enough pen-geekery!
If you're interested, you can also check out my rough pencil sketch/underdrawing on the right. I usually make a rough tonal study in pencil before I do any penwork just to map out the various values. I often think that pen and ink work is very close to painting -- the pen strokes are used to model and build up tones, with line spacing determining value and the direction of the strokes used to model the form.
Geez...I geeked out again...