Saturday 22 November 2008

LEONARD COHEN



Last week I saw Leonard Cohen at the O2 Arena in London and found him such an inspiring figure that I had to draw the genius within hours of getting back home.

I started by quickly drawing the key shapes in black Indian ink before painting in some basic facial tones. I try to work as quickly as possible most of the time which keeps the drawing fresh but also means that a lot of the time I'm making it up as I go along. This drawing took around 30 minutes from start to finish.

His clothes and background were done almost at the same time and when I felt the drawing was slipping away from me I whipped out my faithful pot of non-waterproof Indian ink to re-establish shapes and forms that were close to being lost. I'm disappointed that one of his shoulders looks so sharp but I'll correct that in time.

I use dark blue Quink a lot of the time for areas of shadow. Quink is also useful because it doesn't stand up to being sprayed with bleach which I tend to do when I use it. I enjoy roughing up quick drawings like this by spraying on bleach and water and flicking it with paint and ink before drawing back into it again. This process might often be repeated several times over before I relent and stop bullying it.

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