For my third Drawrch illustration, I wanted to try something a little different from my normal cartoons.
Usually, I don't draw with tapered lines. I love it when artists use them, but I haven't practiced it much myself, so I have a hard time controlling the width of the lines as I draw. Concentrating on regulating the pen pressure isn't something that comes naturally to me; when I work with physical materials, I almost always use a gel ink pen, and I press uniformly hard.
My lack of experience with tapered lines also means that I often have to spend a lot of time thinking about where lines should begin/end, where they should taper off, where I can get away with splitting broad strokes in two, etc.
So I thought I'd give myself a small challenge today and draw with tapered lines. I used a brush called Baskerville, which creates very sharp edges. It also has some extreme stroke smoothing that took a little getting used to.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I'm looking forward to spending more time with this brush. It may become a part of my standard brushes.
As always, here's a time-lapse of my progress creating this illustration: