Playing with tools, playing with light and dark.

This week hasn't been prolific in terms of how many pictures I've produced - but in terms of lessons learned from what I have been drawing, it has been quite superb.

I've drawn the StarWars character 'Darth Vader' three times (below) because he presents an excellent opportunity to play with a high gloss black object and then try to understand what the colour is doing, reflections and so on.

The first one I drew was (below) this chest and head portrait. It came about following a conversation that I had online with Leonid Afremov about how he creates his incredible images (see last weeks blog). He showed me a video of him creating one of his pictures using a knife to apply the paint to the canvass. Being such a novice this is not something I knew anything about and being into digital art myself (not having the tools to really explore physical painting in different forms) - it was difficult to replicate or try. However the drawing tool that i use (with a stylus) allowed me to digitally replicate the style of apply tool strokes and I used Darth Vader as a subject, tryiung to replicate the strokes shown by Leonid. I was quite pleased and surprised by how a series of broad stroke were able to form such a discernable and detailed image.

This took me into playing the glossy surface of Darth's evil mask and helmet (below):

 I started to enjoy drawing with liberal broad strokes of the pen, and applying bold contrasting colours to define lines.

This took me into experimenting with light. In this next picture Darth is holding his red light sabre - which is casting a light over the surface of his face, helmet and armour, creating this purple and pink hue. While the detail of the drawing is not very good, I enjoyed experimenting with coloura bit more and I like the effect - so it was a great lesson.

This picture of George Best (right) cam about using the same technique of apply 'paint' to the image with an edged tool. It gives a ruddy textured impression.

I'm fairly happy with it overall - it's far from perfect of course - but the eyes are reasonably expressive and it is more or less recognisable. 

As I mentioned in last weeks blog, for all his flaws, George Best was a hero of my childhood and to me it was a tragedy to see him taken by the illness of alcoholism. I took me repeated attempts to achieve any kind of reasonable resemblance at all.

This is a picture of Marie Curie. I reverted to the more traditional brush and pencil style that I feel more comfortable with. I was quite happy with this. As a black and white image I managed to carry over some of the lessons about dark and light that I took from the Darth Vader images, and I was also quite happy with the way that I presented the hand.

Marie Curie is an inspirational figure and I like to spend time drawing real genius, rather than just celebrity.

This took me - I'm not sure how - into a composition landscape piece that I'm still drawing at the moment. It's a social and politcal satire on our times. It's taking several days because there's lots of little details in it, perhaps I'll be able to share it next week.