Friday, November 30, 2012

 
Rebecca Front as Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent in the detective series 'Lewis'.
Pencil on bristol paper by Martha Guthrie.
30 november 2012
 
Rebecca Front hates me.
And if she didn't, she does now. Look what a mess I made of her.
I can't get her face right, and believe me, I tried. I broke two pencils on her (allright, just two pencil tips, but for the sake of drama), and I even bought a new pencilsharpener. A red one, well, there you go!
 
I thought I'd try a different approach to portrait drawing this time. I started with rather dark tones on her face, in order to erase to the highlights.
Grand idea.
So after I made her a practically black woman, I took my kneaded rubber eraser and carefully picked up the unwanted graphite. I got bored rather quickly with this extremely slow process on creating highlights, and changed to a normal eraser. Yes! There! There! And there! Away with all the pencilstrokes! Until she no longer looked like a black woman, but an albino...
 
I sighed and started again.
 
I added some dark tones where they should go, and blended them carefully with a paper stump.
I then discovered that the paper had become totally unwilling through all my phrenetic erasing actions earlier.
Rebecca's face became no more than a stain.
 
And the over all look of the portrait was wrong anyway; eyes, nose, mouth, cheeks, everything that makes a person that particular person. All wrong. But how to fix lines if they refuse to be erased anymore.
 
I left her face for what it was and hoped that the adding of her hair would make all the difference.
But when I drew a few lines, I remembered that I can't draw hair at all...
 
I'm sorry, Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent...
 

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

John Thaw as 'Morse' pencil drawing

 
John Thaw as Inspector Morse.
Pencildrawing on Bristol paper by Martha.
27 november 2012.
 
One of, if not the, best detective series ever: Inspector Morse, based on the novels by Colin Dexter.
Til this day I refuse to watch the last episode of the series, in which Morse dies.
I couldn't bare the sight of him dead and poor Lewis being all sad about it. I already cry when my dachshund Ruben wags his tail in his sleep, and that's even a happy thing...
 
Unfortunately John Thaw has died. But he still stars every now and again in my livingroom as Morse, Kavanagh or Detective Inspector Jack Regan in the Sweeny.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Laurence Fox as DS James Hathaway in 'Lewis'

 
Laurence Fox as DS James Hathaway in 'Lewis'.
Pencil drawing on sketching paper by Martha.
22 november 2012

By the way, I will redraw him some day on better paper.

 

Clare Holman as Laura Hobson in 'Lewis'

 
Clare Holman as Laura Hobson in 'Lewis'
Pencil drawing on sketching paper by Martha.
19 november 2012

Kevin Whately - Inspector Lewis

 
Kevin Whately as Inspector Lewis in the detective series 'Lewis'.
Pencil drawing on Bristol paper by Martha.
17 november 2012

Frank Thornton portrait drawing

 
Frank Thornton as Captain Peacock in "Are you being served"
Pencil drawing on Bristol paper.
by Martha, 15 november 2012