Dolly (2020)
Ballpoint pen on paper

This is Dolly—drawn in 2020, and the first portrait in the series I ended up doing during COVID. It started pretty simply: I found out my supervisor at the libraries was leaving, and I wanted to make them a parting gift. Something personal. Something I actually put time into. But of course—logistics happened, life happened, and I never got to hand them the original, which still bugs me.

Dolly felt like the right energy to start with. Big hair, big warmth, that kind of smile that reads before you even notice the linework. I leaned into the things ballpoint does best—clean contours, confident hatching, and letting the highlights stay paper-white so the whole portrait feels bright without needing color.

And yeah—there’s a funny footnote to this one. I made prints and sold them on Etsy for a bit, and they got pulled for copyright. Fair. It’s one of those “I understand completely” moments, but it still cracks me up that this is how I learned that lesson.

Either way, I still love this drawing. It feels like the beginning of something—not just a portrait, but the start of me using long quiet time to build a skill, one face at a time.

-PERSONAL COLLECTION-