Another exercise from the Bert Dodson book. I was tasked with drawing a portrait of…
Heeeere’s Jonny
I’ve had an idea for another set of marker portraits to get started on but had just one page left in a sketchbook and didn’t want the set to straddle two sketchbooks. So I needed a subject for a one–off portrait to complete the old sketchbook. Without anybody in mind, I headed for Facebook and looked for the friend whose birthday was coming up next. First up was Peter but his photos were all a bit too picture perfect, so I went for the next one on the list.
So this is Jonny, a mate from Uni. It’s a photo of him rowing, probably as stroke of our college first boat.
The original plan was to black out the background and hair with no visible difference between then but I put the hair down first and it evoked 1980s Jonny so much (today he sports a Gregg Wallace hairdo) that I had to keep it and added a purple background instead.
There’s not much to say about this one otherwise. Markers are always great fun and good for practising seeing and drawing big shapes. It’s amazing what they can do really. None of you will know Jonny but this is a really good likeness. A shame about the erroneous purple mark on his left shoulder though. This one’s not up for sale – I’ll be gifting it to Jon next time I see him.
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