Recently, a friend told me that my charcoal pieces looked good. That was all the encouragement I needed to use the medium again. This portrait of Manish is one more for my College of Art Portraits series. I’ve inadvertently made his eyes look a bit like Sylvester Stallone’s 
and I hope he wont mind.
Charcoal on 12″ X 10″ off-white handmade paper.
I’ve been working in fits and starts on my College of Art Portrait series. Made this one of Sandeep’s at the art group meet this morning. We hadnt met up in 5 weeks and I was really happy to catch up and restart these meetings once more. I had made a sketch of Vishal yesterday evening which hadnt turned out so well and so I was keen on trying another. I’m bit happier with this one but the resemblance is missing. I think a Take 3 is required here too. Maybe I’ll just skip to painting him instead. The one below was made in Oct/Nov ‘05 soon after the photograph was taken. I showed it to Jigdum and he drew out a rough sketch to show me the areas I needed to take care in. I’m also pleased to see the progress over a period of time.
There was something about the angle in which this photograph was taken and being too close to the subject with a wide angle lens. Vishal’s nose was out of proportion to the rest of his face. I found this very difficult to tackle. My brain refused to accept that I could only see so much of his chin. Made 3 attempts from the same photo reference over 3 weeks. The one on top, the one I just finished has come the closest to resembling him. One more for the College of Art Portrait Series.
A quick sketch of the Painting HOD at the Delhi College of Art. Mr Abhimanue Govindan
At the College of art we had lots of artists visiting and one of them was Anjolie Ela Menon. She was one whose work I was familiar with and she very kindly allowed me to take a photograph. Pen and Ink to try and keep my hand in. The shape of the face has been penned in incorrectly and it became impossible to correct later. And a pencil sketch of Priyanka, a classmate of mine at the College of Art.
This has been dated incorrectly. Started this morning. Ever since I’ve stopped working I find it difficult to keep a track of the date. I usually know which day of the week it is but the date eludes me. I thought today was the 10th and dated both drawings incorrectly.
The one on top is of Yadavendra a class mate of mine at the Delhi College of Art. He was one of the class monitors for the year and was extremely helpful. I hope to do a painting of his too. In fact the plan is to do one of each classmate and batchmate. At least for those whom I can drum up decent pictures.
And the one below is of a model for Gianfranco Ferre. The ad appears in The Peak magazine. I’d made one of Marco Mantovani earlier from the same magazine only his photo ref was part of an article. The model looks like he’s got stitches on his cheeks and a really deep stare, these were not artistic liberties just mistakes 
I hope to start painting again soon. I would also like to make the next few drawings from life.
This album is powered by BubbleShare – Add to my blog
The installation sculpture of the little girls sitting down to study was the first thing that I saw every morning when I entered the college grounds and it really brightened up my day. I then spent half my day with the 2nd year sculpture students and the afternoon with the 2nd year painting students. Friendly, helpful and hardworking was the attitude of the majority, something that I hadnt come across when I went to college 20+ years earlier.
Study in Brush and Ink based on a photograph taken earlier in class. This one is much better than my effort with a reed pen which came out real wonky and i havent uploaded it “:P”
I did a second one of me from a photograph taken to help me in my stone sculpture. I messed up the shading on the chin big time and it now looks as though i have a beard!! Ramesh also pointed out that i had messed up the angle – I was looking downwards. Just that i hadnt matched it against the reference the next day. The night i did it i was real sleepy and went to bed soon after finishing this one.
There’s something about his self portraits that make you want to try them out. This one was reworked on. I did another one with poster colors which I will add to this post later. I think this one was the better of the two.
I’ve somehow made him look Indian Reminds me of a character in the movie Monsoon Wedding – P.K.Dubey. I wonder if we naturally tend to change features to resemble those that we are used to seeing.
I went through a pastel phase and this is one of 9-10 pastel pieces made in the Fab India sketch book. About 6″ by 5″.
I’m now hoping to make one just using his style.
The HOD of the Painting department, Abhimanyue introduced me to the work of artists like Freud, Bonnard and Patwardhan. He was very generous and loaned me some books to study. I just fell in love with Lucien Freud’s style and tried copying his self portrait. It was a time when I was drawing directly with the brush and spending about half an hour finishing each piece before falling off to sleep.
This was made with poster colours in a small notebook. The paper in this book is thin and very smooth but I loved it’s bright coloured cover. I was trying to fill it by attempting to make a piece a day. Didnt last very long but I enjoyed the time, painting at night with a breakfast tray full of art supplies. I think I need to dig that tray out again.
Recent Posts at Blog Schmlog Recent posts on draw the line
