Colour Pencil Portraits of my Children

  

Around 2006 I did the drawing of my youngest daughter and my son.  I chose the wrong paper for this project.  It was too rough and too much white kept coming through.  So it ended up in my folder of watercolour paintings, pastel sketches and other drawings that never see the light of day again.

 

Many years ago I did a colour pencil portrait of my little girls.  However, I never framed the piece and it also ended up in the folder of doomed works. 

I think that I am over critical of any work that I do for myself, and it is a bit of a shame.  I think I should sign and frame these pieces and show them off in my home.

Portrait of Jennifer Lopez

My commissioned portrait is complete and has been delivered to it's owner, but I still cannot share until it's unveiling.  So once again I will share some of my previous work.

I find that working in coloured pencils is quite relaxing.  I love the sound of the pencil as it scratches along the paper, leaving behind it colourful trail.  It's somehow theraputic.

This is a little A4 portrait I did of Jennifer Lopez a few years ago.  It was from a photograph we found in a magazine, so I guess it had already been airbrushed to look it's best.




Jennifer Lopez Portrait in Coloured Pencil

 


Jennifer Lopez Portrait - Stages of drawing



Magnum P.I.

Way back in the days when I was a young Art Student, we used to love watching Magnum P.I.  It was always on TV on a Saturday night, just before the main movie, (we only had one TV channel back then).

We did not have a TV in our College Hostel, so on a Saturday night a black and white portable TV would be carted downstairs to the communal lounge and we would all get to watch our hero.  Tom Selleck was gorgeous back then and still is today.  

I'm getting distracted...oh yes, I remember spending a day or two in bed with the flu, and during that time, I grabbed my pencil crayons and drew this portrait of Tom Selleck from a magazine cover.  Hmm...maybe it's time for an updated portrait.



Tom Selleck as Magnum P.I.  (1983)



Living inside my head

I often sit and draw faces from imagination.  I'll sit and draw while watching, or rather listening to the TV.  I usually start with the eyes and work around it from there.  Below are two examples of these drawings.  The second one was a fun experiment in trying something with more expression.  I guess these are just some of the crazy characters living inside my head.

 

How do I do...

Artists throughout time, have done self portraits and it is interesting to see how artist's see themselves.  I've done a few over the years, mostly from photos though.  It is still strange to see myself appear on the page from my own hands.  Even though they are from photographs, there is always something else that comes through, because we do tend to draw what we think we see or know.  When looking at them I wonder what it tells other people about the way I see myself.

Colour Pencil - 1983

Pencil - 2011

So maybe it is not the mirror that reflects who we really are, but the way we represent ourselves in our art forms, whether it be painting, writing or any other for that matter.

TOBY the Jack Russell

When my daughter got a Jack Russell puppy a few years ago, she asked me to draw him in coloured pencil for her.  Here you can see the stages of the drawing.

Drawing in colour pencils has always been one of my favourite mediums for portraits of some kind.  I've only ventured into painting portraits in the last year.