Welcome to my blog! Here you'll find many samples of my finished art, conceptual work, unpublished material, and other miscellaneous jobs. You can find a complete list of my published books at this link.

I currently have signed copies of THE GREAT MONTEFIACO, WHACKO THE CHOOK, THE PUMPKIN EATER FROM PONDICHERRY, and THE SHIKKER COLA COWS available for purchase. For more info, please contact me at whackothechook@internode.on.net


Tuesday, July 6, 2010

PORTRAITURE

Here's a rare departure for me — portraiture:

This was done as a wedding present for a friend who shares similar music interests as me. I rarely do anything realistic for the simple reason I'm just not that good at it. Or it's probably more a case of being out of practice, as I used to be more confident drawing straight from life.

This drawing is taken from a photo of my grandpa Redlich, from the late 1940s I'd say:

I stuffed up the eyes a bit, and the mouth isn't quite right. This was initially done as a Christmas present, but I just wasn't entirely happy with it. The problem with drawing in ink is you only have so much room to move when you make mistakes. The eyes look weird because I kept working at them trying to get them right, but they just ended up looking too dark. It's too fiddly to white it out and work over the top of that. Instead I redid the picture in acrylic:

I had to improvise the colours, as the reference photo was black and white. In retrospect, I should have just done a monochromatic painting, I'm not too fussed on the colour. With a little more practice before hand, this could have been a much better painting. I certainly need to hone my skills in this particular area. Nonetheless, my family seemed happy with it — I gave my parents the original for their new house and I gave prints to my brothers and my grandma.

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