Kurt Cobain in Pencil and other things

I started a new job this week and the hours have actually made it quite difficult to draw and illustrate. It has just kind of thrown me out of a rhythm. This being said, I've got four pieces to share. Quite varied - there's no theme here, I've just allowed myself to do what I'm tempted by.

The first piece that I attempted was this portrait of American journalist and media figure, Oprah Winfrey. I think her achievements in US and global journalism, film and culture are difficult to appreciate. She's definitely underrated - possibly because she is financially astute and commercially successful. This shouldn't obscure our appreciation of what she has done for equality, liberal politics, literacy and a number of other fundamental good causes. As a woman, and as a black person, she is a torch bearer. There is nothing in her presentation that makes her inaccessible to men or other racial groups either.

Anyway I wanted this picture to be bold and convey her bright presentation and energy. I also wanted to avoid my usual style of portraiture because I didn't think it would put her character across, so I tried something more modern and less traditional instead.

 

After I painted Oprah I decided to create a portrait of the Dalai Lama - but following on from Oprah I wanted this to be even more figurative and I wanted to bring his philosophy and relgious belief into the picture as part of his physical appearance.

I moved from this piece to something more familiar and traditional. A simple pencil sketch, returning to a man who has inspired me many times - Kurt Cobain.

I did this really quickly because I did want to do something but I was short on time. I was surprised that when I shared this on Niume and Twitter it got shared a good bit and drew some compliments. Let's be fair - some of that is the appeal that Kurt Cobain still has and the fact that people genuinely want to remember him and see him stay in the currency of modern culture. I can understand that.

Then I drew inspiration quite unexpectedly - isn't that the best type of inspiration. I recently encountered Joanne Chadwick through twitter - and there will be more regarding Joanne's art in a follow up post. Anyway. Joanne has a wonderful twitter picture - it's very undoctored in appearance and has a kindness and honesty about it that I thought was very appealing. So I used it as the basis of a portrait:

 

This picture came really easy actually - I sometime find some portraits need a lot of revisiting and tweaking before I feel happy - but just about every aspect of this was enjoyable.

Thanks for reading - do leave comments!