Another exercise from the Bert Dodson book. I was tasked with drawing a portrait of…
Paul Shane
I’ve had my eye in the late Paul Shane for a while. In particular the Paul Shane who turned up on Pebble Mill that time to sing You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling. The more I watch that video, the more I like it and the more I appreciate the effort that Paul put into it. He does still get some stick for it but, Jones toy, ot’s those backing singers that deserve it, not Paul.
Anyway, I dug out the coloured pencils today and followed a similar process to that for the Big Sam painting. One thing I did different with the face was to burnish it earlier, after I’d only put down some colours with the edge of the pencil and not darkened it by using the point. Another thing I did differently was to burnish the face using beige red rather than white. Beige red is a flesh colour and I thought it might drag my impressionistic colours back to something realistic, which I guess it did.
And I do like what I’ve ended up with. Most importantly the likeness is there, and is still there when you cover up Paul’s distinctive hairdo. The eyes, the hair, the colours and the hard edge along Paul’s left forehead all work. This feels like a fitting tribute to a nice guy (somewhere there’s a version of the interview in which Paul’s interviewed afterwards) and I’m feeling proud. This one’s up for sale.
Portraits might become my thing in coloured pencil. I’m already to see whether there are any other colours that I could use to expand my set. I’ll probably wait until I need to buy replacements before doing this. That might not be too far away, with black, white and beige red already looking shorter than all my other colours.
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