David Gilmour

I tried something different today: as well as using a grid, I did my original drawing upside down, working from an upside down source.  This is supposed to be a pretty good way to lock out the left side of the brain and let the right side do all the work.  So you draw what you see rather than drawing the shapes you think you’re supposed to draw.  It generally worked well, although David’s left eye ended up lower than expected and had to be moved.  While I know the grid can’t be blamed for this, I’m going to have a go without the grid next time as the grid may have let a little bit of the left side of the brain into the party.

My style with the coloured pencils has already made itself known.  I do multiple layers with all sorts of weird, impressionistic colours and then burnish it at the end with a white or flesh coloured pencil.  This is the way it’s going to be for a while.

Today I start the colouring with the ear and ended up with some quite heavy colour, which ended up causing me problems later as I needed to match this with heavy colour on the face, which meant having to add lots more colours, even after I’d ended up with something that I’d have been really happy with had I not already set the rules with the ear.  So the face colours are definitely heavier than I’d have liked.  Darker  colours there too.

The likeness isn’t great today.  I can see a bit of there but if I didn’t know who this was supposed to be, I would have been wondering whether it might be David “Bumble” Lloyd or Sven Göran Eriksson.  I like the eyes though: a highlight on the iris and pupil and shadows of the eyelid on the white work wonders.  Overall, though, not enough of a likeness for this one to be put up for sale.