Patrick Troughton (Doctor Who 2)

After drawing William Hartnell it was only a matter of time before getting around to Patrick Troughton, who played Doctor Who from 1966 to 1969.

Troughton was a hugely versatile actor, to the point where he was unrecogniseable in many of his roles. It was tough to find a picture of him which hadn't been drawn to death by fellow fans and in the end I settled for the one I did because I couldn't find an existing pencil portrait of it, and becuase of the nice bright light shining on the right of the face (his left). I left the paper almost untouched there.

The only problem with that was that the same light made Troughton's left eye appear white, and I originally drew it that way. However it looked plain wrong, so the eye is now shaded (although it still does look a bit 'off'!).

I had not drawn this 'bowl' hairstyle before and to be honest it was harder than I had been imagining. In retrospect I should have made the hair in fewer but longer pencil strokes, rather than my usual style of shorted strokes more concentrated in the darker areas. The result is not bad, but it is not quite Troughton's Dr Who hairstyle.

The best feature in this portrait is probaly the mouth. Unusually the bottom lip is actually lighter than the surrounding skin, and I left it almost completely white. The deep lines from the nose to the corner of the mouth provide some lovely contrast too.

Here is the finished portrait:

As usual, for more pictures or to commission a portrait, visit www.pencil-pictures.co.uk. 

Nude rear

A bit of a change this time. Since time immemorial, artists have been drawn to the human figure, so now it is my turn. I have drawn a few nudes from life before but none of the subjects will let me show off the pictures(!) so in the end I was forced to research pitures of nude women on the internet. It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.

(And the truth is, drawing nudes is not as fun as it looks in Titanic. It's more a case of 'Can I move?', 'I'm cold', 'Can I have a blanket? How about on the top half whilst you are drawing my legs, then switch?', 'When can I got to the toilet', 'I have cramp', 'Hurry up and draw the thing!', etc. Hence drawing a picture from a computer is much easier. Although there is the obvious disadvantage of not being in a room with a beautiful naked woman, but you can't have everything. Anyway.)

So in the end I chose a tasteful picture of a nude model facing away from the camera and putting her feet in a ballet pose. It's a copyrighted picture so I'm not allowed to reproduce it here I'm afraid...  I chose the cheaper, smoother paper for this picture and used a soft pencil, which I smudged with my finger to get some shadow gradation.  There was a lot more hair in the picture than usual, although it was smaller on an A4 sheet. Because of this, the hair is much less detailed than usual, although I am happy with the 'sweeping' effect.

I was also happy with the back and bum. There is some great lighting in the photo, which allowed me to go really dark on the shadows, showing off the shoulder blades nicely. The hardest part was the feet, which I am still not quite happy with, although you can tell how she's standing. Anyway here she is:

For my latest pictures, visit http://pencil-pictures.co.uk

Pussy cat

Something a bit out of the ordinary this time - someone asked me to draw her cat! Having not drawn animals since I was about 5 I knew this would pose a challenge. Here's the pussy in question:

So, first things first, I drew the eyes. These are not so different from human eyes so no problem so far! Then I drew the shape of the face. The fur I made up as I went along, but eventually settled for lots of V shapes, pointing in the direction of the hair. If you do enough of these it looks like fur - trust me. Do a layer of light Vs and then dark Vs in different pencils (H and B for example) to get the 'mottled' effect, and add more dark Vs in the darker stripe areas.

The whiskers were done last. I rolled a putty rubber into a cone shape and 'drew' the white whiskers by erasing existing lines with the pointed end using sweeping hand motions and letting the paper shine through. I then continued eachwhisker beyond the cat outline using a B pencil. I'm very happy with the result and so was this moggy's owner:

For commissions visit http://www.pencil-pictures.co.uk.

Party girls, or sharpening up

Today's picture is a commission ordered by one girl as a gift to another, and the picture is of the pair of them together. Unfortunately the selection of photos I was offered were taken on a mobile phone with a low-definition camera attached, and so are blurry. Well I say 'unfortunately' but this is where the pencil can do something better than any computer - sharpen an image! Here is the photo chosen for the portrait:

I blew up the image and printed it first, then drew sharper lines around the faces and hands, then copied my own lines onto a new A4 sheet. This time I reverted to the thinner, less textured paper. I find this can be better for drawing younger faces with smoother skin!

The plait of the girl on the left took the longest to draw. It is just not clear enough in the picture, and trying to guess is usually a disaster! In the end I did a few studies or real-life plaits to try and see where the hair goes and what catches the light.

The gold flowers also posed a problem, but I settled for drawing them as-is, so in the finished work they still look fake!

Here is the final protrait:

Speed drawing video of Darth Vader

My son is a big Star Wars fan and asked me to draw him a picture of Darth Vader. We had a look through his books and found a nice picture to copy, and I took a photocopy. I thought it might be fun to film it so I suspended a camera above my head using a tripod. Looked a bit silly but there you go! I only had an hour and half's worth of tape spare so I drew it in a bit of a hurry, but the results are not bad. For most of the detail in the helmet I used the pointed end of a B pencil, with a bit of 2B for the darkest areas, and some H for the lighter areas. In the photograph Darth Vader is standing under some strip lighing so each light bulb is reflected in the helmet. I left these parts white.

The cloak was drawn with the flat side of a B pencil, with extra shading in the darker areas to give the illusion of folds in the cloth.

Here is the video:

And in case you are not impressed enough, the piano version of the Imperial March is played by me :)

Here's Darth:

And lest you forget, here's my Elvis video:

Done on the same table, before I realised how to suspend the camera!

Here's Elvis:

Happily for me I managed to sell this one, but let me know if you'd like me to draw you one!

Brave new world...

Hello. I am now on Facebook!

I think you can get to my page this way: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100003499591344

Good luck:)

Little boy in a kimono

The latest picture is actually from a full-length portrait of a little boy wearing a kimono. The face was quite small in the original hard copy so I took a high-resolution scan and blew it up (enlarged not exploded). The resultant picture was still quite blurred, but there was enough detail to be going on with.

For this picture I went back to the old method of a 2B pencil on the older smooth paper. The face was done as usual, with the shading the result of the side of the pencil, and the detail done with the point. The kimono was fun too. It's actually easy to draw - simply shade with the side of the pencil in the direction of the collar, i.e. from the neck to the point in the middle of the chest. (Whatever you do, don't draw the robe as right over left - this is reserved for corpses!!) A few dark and light areas give the illusion of creases in the fabric. Experiment with this and you'll find you can create life-like images.

Not a lot else to say about this one, other than this boy has the cutest little cheeks I have ever seen!

See all the latest pictures at http://pencil-pictures.co.uk.