Saturday, March 23, 2019

The fair-haired boy


The project of making small pastel studies of people’s faces continues. The latest are these three, of the same subject, who I will call DB, short for Danish boy. My references were old photographs, blurry, the face literally thumbnail-sized, taken when he was three and a half years old (right), about five (above) and about 10. I wanted to capture the essence of his features at those different moments in the narrative of his life.  

For the first two drawings, I used my trusty Jaxell soft pastels (the square ones in the 72-color set), which I often employ for sketching or practice, and used rough paper (karduspapir) from Stelling. For the third (the boy at age 10), I thought something more permanent would be in order, namely Rembrandt soft pastels on brown pastel paper. 

All three were drawn freehand, which gave me a solid feeling of achievement.

I love the sun-drenched look of the last picture, the light falling on the boy’s bare shoulders, the cast shadows with a bit of red in them. The lopsided smile. 💕- Bing




No comments:

Post a Comment

An Il Vespaio (Hornet's Nest, 1970) blog

I have a new project: a fan blog titled " The Boys of Il Vespaio ", with a subtitle that mirrors this (I ragazzi del Hornet's ...