Charlie Chaplin without disguise

I am not ashamed to say that this is a totally unrecognisable portrait of a very famous person. I have shown it to a few people and no one has had the remotest idea who it is. One of my colleagues thought it was Lewis Hamilton!

Well I have put his name in the title, and you can also see the description over at pencil-pictures.co.uk, so no prizes for guessing the identity of Mr Charles Chaplin, the British silent comedy actor who made it big in Hollywood. I chose this picture of the great man because once upon I time I used to organise a picture quiz, and this was always a favourite because it was such an unfamiliar view. Strange to think that the image of a man is defined by a false toothbrush moustache and hat but there you go.

The portrait stuck in my mind because every time I looked at it I was surprised that such an apparently happy-go-lucky comedian could have such intense eyes. This is what I tried to capture when I drew this and I think the eyes have come out well.

The biggest challenge came from that crazy hairstyle! Apparently back in the 1920s, wavy hair with a centre parting was all the rage. For this I looked at the picture with screwed up eyes and simply drew the light and dark patches on the portrait, then afterwards added finer lines to show hair and its general direction. The wavy bit on the right-hand side took a while, but I took some liberties and made it reflect rather more light than in the photo.

The suit in the photo was almost entirely in darkness so I made it up. This is something that some artists, myself included, have a weakness for. It's all very well to draw what we see, but trying to imagine what something looks like is an extra-special skill! The suit on this picture is quite weak, but I am hoping that I drew the eyes well enough that on one notices!