Nearly all of the sketches here are made from life and as such are usually rapidly-made (often in 15 minutes or so) and incomplete. They’re notes that try to capture something of a likeness. The first lot of drawings are all of children – and they just won’t stay still – won’t ‘sit’. If one’s not to draw from a photo – which I certainly want to avoid with a head – then you have in the end just to find a way to deal with it. So I draw throughout the movement. If there is a choice, then it is one of whether to ‘compensate’ for the movement, and if so, how much. Often I do so as little as possible.
To me, drawing is a process necessarily with attendant components of thought, feeling, movement and time passing – this sets it apart from photography. I think a lot of people when drawing carry in their heads exemplary paradigms – either of photographic similarity – or if not that, then one based on renaissance perspective – so endemic to 2-D art for the last 600 years or so, that it’s still thought of as the ‘right way’ to put 3 into 2-D!
For me, what might start out as, say, a profile could end up combined with a three-quarters view – something I find helps me to discover ‘where a face goes’ more than a photo ever could. Sometimes I’ll slightly distort and exaggerate features too. So what one ends up with is an elusive likenesses – it comes and goes. And when you consider that it’s possible to take a photo of someone whom you know closely such that it is: ‘nothing like them’ or to take another that ‘captures them’, it’s clear to me that likeness has little to do with the medium or process…
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel figure sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch – Sleeping Child
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Portrait sketch – watercolour over biro
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Portrait sketch – watercolour over biro
▲ Portrait sketch – watercolour over biro
▲ Gel pen portrait sketch
▲ Portrait sketch – watercolour over gel pen
▲ Halloween portrait sketch – watercolour over gel pen
▲ Portrait sketch – coloured pencil
Another way to convey the passage of time is simply to draw and redraw a subject and then compare and contrast. But beware, this can be scary! I don’t know many people who’ll readily agree to sit for a drawing — unless they’re being paid for it or sitting for a commission. I know I’m not at all keen. So these self-portraits were made as a result of the usual necessity — there being no-one else around at the time, which was just as well! The first were made in the early Eighties, the second lot about thirty years on plus!!
‘Selfie’ 2017 biro drawing for the Drawing Class I teach
Here follows a random selection of drawings made from other people – all adults!