Drawing Ken

This portrait took about three hours to draw. I've completed 22 portrait in this series so far, and Ken is the only artist who wanted to draw me too. Ken is a fantastic artist and some of his work can be found HERE, on the website of Flinders Lane Gallery. As usual I like to leave the drawing unfinished, or should I say, finished up to a certain point. I find that an image develops in waves, and that when you add something to the work, it often follows that more details are needed to complete the next wave. Although this is not a complete drawing in regard to putting everything in, for me this is a finished stage of a drawing because the wave is complete.

Ken Smith, 2018, pencil, 52,25 x 42 cm

Drawing Aaron

Aaron sat under a skylight for this portrait. It's good to change the lighting, the medium and the direction of the sitter from time to time, or else everything seems formulaic. It become a little tedious as well if every approach to a portrait drawing is repetitious. Sometimes I add touches to a drawing when the sitter has left, but I only added a couple of small strokes to the bottom hand. The rest is how it looked when Aaron left.

Aaron teaches animation at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Melbourne. He also makes films, and has a very inquisitive mind

Aaron McLoughlin, 2018, charcoal, conte and white pastel 

on fawn paper, 53.25 x 38 cm

Lily Mae Martin, 2018, charcoal, conte and white pastel on 

fawn paper, 52.75 x 36.75 cm

Lily Mae is an excellent artist who specialises in drawings, mainly in ink. As I was drawing her, I concentrated on the head only, but her arms and hands looked so good I turned the paper over and started again. I drew her head much smaller this time, to allow for the inclusion of her hands. But I had to ask her to come back for a second time to do them. Of course, as usual, it's impossible to hold a pose and not have some slight movement, so you need to be able to invent a little as the fingers slightly shift from their initial position. Of always loved the red chalk drawings on coloured papers by artists from the Renaissance, and this has inspired me to adopt their approach to mediums in this series of profile portraits.