Captain George Mainwaring

I followed the usual process.  Grid, pencil outlines, dark greys and black, light greys, flesh tones, bit of guest colour, rubbing pencil lines out only when I needed to.

One thing I did slightly differently today was to mark in the irises, nostrils and mouth line in dark grey after accurately plotting their positions in the grid.  I’d been having some likeness problems and at least  this pegged down some unerasable reference points that would hold firm while I kept attempting to draw all the other features.  In fact one of the things I’ve discovered while doing these portraits is the process of “finding the likeness”.  It’s something they walkways talk about on PAOTY but that has been alien to me for a long time.  If you’ve not got the likeness in the original drawing, how are you supposed to move towards it later on?  But that’s what I’ve been doing in these portraits.  I’ve started with some barely acceptable pencil portrait outlines and kept adding colour marks until I can see the likeness and then slammed on the brakes and put the markers down.  It’s something I’ve not experienced before.

So how is George?  Oh he works.  The likeness is there and there’s a look of disgust in the face that tells a story, even if that’s down to Arthur and not to me.  And the character in the portrait marches the character in the TV program, which I’d normally be delighted by but after some of the other work I’ve done recently, I’m a tiny bit disappointed that I didn’t manage to add any new aspects to George’s character.  And some of the grey shadows on the face (like along the bottom of the chin) are maybe a bit too hard edged and crude,  The better I get at this, the bigger a critic I become.

But, still, a good day’s work there.