Jimmy Cliff portrait
Jimmy Cliff died today. I listened to his music and did this quick sketch.
Amanda Portrait
Continuing the quick pencil portraits, my friend Amanda.
Diane
This was a challenge. It’s hard enough drawing friends, but drawing a friend when asked by her partner of many years – knowing exactly how her smile looks and squint of the eyes, every facial expression. How does one capture all of that faithfully?
Pencil and conté crayon on paper.
Portrait of actress Ida Gyllensten
Being a fan of 50s/60s kitsch art, have been playing with a contemporary way to create this type of art featuring modern iconic people. Some famous, some not. This is Ida Gyllensten, actress and singer. Drawn in pencil and crayon.
Ida is a friend from wild days in London in the mid-noughties.
Ida is a phenomenal actress. The Guardian said of Ida’s Magdalena in Scandi Noir ‘End of Summer’:
Magdalena is overly protective of her youngest son and cruelly dismisses her daughter. Some of those flashback scenes are beautifully dream-like, before they dissolve into nightmares.
It’s currently on BBC iPlayer.
https://idagyllensten.se/english
https://dreamingofislands1.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-of-islands
Lana Del Ray
Being a fan of 50s/60s kitsch art, have been playing with a contemporary way to create this type of art featuring modern iconic people. Some famous, some not. More to come.
Drawn in pencil and crayon.
Violent Violet
Literally just doodling with Procreate ‘lightsabers’ as I call them. It turned out with a pretty good likeness of the cat, so posting it here.
Moose never would’ve hurt her
Charlotte Rampling as Velma in Farewell My Lovely.
Mum’s tomatoes
The beginning of this year’s allotment harvest. Just inspired by the riot of colour and sunlight on. The kitchen table.
This picture uses Risograph techniques and a reduced colour palette for a punchy poster like look.
Life Drawing
Playing with some old school print textures, cross hatch and halftone textures. Doing this with human form proved a tricky way to start! Experimenting in this way helps with keeping your ways of looking and style evolving.
Diver’s Cove, Reigate
I’ve been using an iPad and Procreate for sketch practice. Procreate takes a little time to learn and at first seems overwhelming. I’m a skilled Photoshop user – having spent years doing fashion and archival photo retouch and manipulation – so if you’re starting with Procreate, and have little prior experience, have patience. I’ve followed some great tutorials. However, the drawing and painting techniques all seem a bit alien to me – and not my way of drawing. Because I’ve now got the hang of the basics, I decided to take the iPad out and use like a ‘real’ sketch pad. My friend was swimming at Diver’s Cove today, so whilst keeping an eye on the dog from the shore, I had a bash at drawing this beautiful location. I’ve mainly used colour pencils and conté crayons for this – and it felt natural and familiar, as if I was using real paper. It’s a great feeling to be able to just sketch with a studio full of materials, all compressed down into an iPad!
More importantly, it’s not analogue vs digital art. It’s simply about making art at all – and not having artificial blockers. I was telling myself: ‘I don’t have paper’, or ‘I don’t have a pen’, or ‘I don’t have an easel’ – everything was blocking me. The iPad and Apple Pencil just got me started again without blockers. I’m practicing again, I’m drawing again and I feel better for it – it’s an essential thing for me to be drawing – often.
Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” – Andy Warhol