Exercise: Choosing content

Questions.

• If this were to be made into a film what would the main character be like?

I’m imagining a very stern, humourless man. Serious to a fault, career driven and focused. Being an older policeman, I’m picturing him being powerfully built and intimidating. The text mentions a sort of permanent brow furrow, so I’m seeing long pronounced wrinkles giving him a mean expression. Obviously very committed to his work, and probably driven by a strong sense of order and justice. I could imagine someone like Liam Cunningham playing the role.

• What clothes would the main character be wearing?

I suppose he would be wearing era-appropriate business-wear. The text mentions that he’s spent the last 15 years filing police papers, so he wouldn’t be a uniformed, duty policeman. Probably a detective or criminal investigator, which would usually mean a plainclothes officer. Given the descriptions, I can picture a plain, unembellished suit.

• What furniture is in the main area in which the action takes place?

Going off the descriptions, it is nearly empty. No curtains or other decorative elements, and the only information presented is that the room is large, and has a large desk in it. I guess the desk is plain, undecorated and austere.

Visual Reference.

In searching for visual reference material for wartime London, I came across this article by Imperial War Museums: https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-clothes-rationing-affected-fashion-in-the-second-world-war

I found it very informative, particularly explaining rationing and the Utility clothing scheme implemented by the British government in 1941. I think this forms a nice thematic connection with the main character’s own spartan sensibilities, and there’s plenty of reference images of men’s clothing printed under the “CC41” label (Civilian Clothing 1941) that will help me draw a suitable, era-appropriate outfit for this character.

I put together a digital collage of some of the images I was looking at for reference material. I thought of a lot of different actors that I thought might work for the role, including Liam Cunningham, Daniel Day Lewis, Christopher Lee, Humphrey Bogart, Ralph Fiennes, Charles Dance and Brendan Gleeson. I looked at a lot of artwork too, particularly work by Tim Sale and Alex Toth.

I won’t embed it in this post because I’m sure most of the images are copywrited, but you can see it here: https://imgur.com/1lPb4qi

 

Moodboard.

The word that I chose to inform my moodboard was “austere”. In my mind it connotes not only being severe and frugal, but also stoicism and a having a clear purpose.

I chose to approach my moodboard with two perpectives in mind. One, the colouristic and textural way, using earth tones and coarse fabrics. But I also wanted to incorporate a monochrome element, as I had a good idea that I wanted to do my final drawing in black and white.

I’ve started to enjoy making these simple moodboards, I think using found materials like this can open up opportunities to think laterally when it comes to colour and texture choices. For this moodboard I used some scrap fabric from some of my girlfriends sewing projects, and I think it turned out very interesting. I tried to choose neutral patterns that might have been used around the era, like simple plaid and pinstripes.

Portrait.

So, on to the portrait. My first order of business was to sketch up some ideas and character sheet elements. I spent some time thinking about hair styles. I made the decision to do the drawing as the character walks to the window with his hands clasped behind his back, because I feel that that gave me the strongest impression of what the character ought to look like when I was reading the passage.

I did this drawing digitally, and I took snapshots of my progress as I went along.

This was my initial sketch. I really wanted to capture the focus that I thought was central to the character, with that sort of permanent furrowed brow.

As I developed the drawing I added some spectacles, figuring that maybe somebody who spends 15 years filing police reports may need a pair. I tried to add a large tweed jacket, showing off a stocky frame.

As I kept on drawing I grew less and less pleased with it. At this stage I was seriously overworking it, trying to get it how I want. The posture is just not working for me. He is too round, although I initially liked the idea of a weighty character, I ended up feeling like it simply didn’t match the undecorated nature of his office, and the scarcity of war-time London. This drawing simply doesn’t give me the impression of a stern, focused police detective. I didn’t think this drawing could be saved, so I started again, trying to retain the elements that I liked.

This sketch went much better. His head is held higher, implying determination. He is thinner and looks more passionate. I think the posture is very good and the clothing falls much better. This is a great example of the benefits of iterative drawing.

Inking. I really like the way I’ve rendered the face. The neat moustache tells me that he is orderly and fastidious, the kind of person who keeps an undecorated office and has a strong belief in order. But the 5 o’clock shadow and untrimmed hair implies that he works for long stetches of time and could be married to his work.

Finished ink layer.

I added in some dark shadows and tried to play with a background composition, taking inspiration from my recent moodboard escapades and collage work. I’m pleased with the face but I feel like the shading of his torso could be better, it just looks slightly off to me. A thing for me to keep in mind in the future is to work on doing high contrast shading on full body figures and practise drawing different kinds of clothing.

I was happy with the drawing at this point but decided to add colour for practise, to see where the drawing would wind up.

I played with a number of different textured brushes when colouring. I kept to a very muted palette. Overall I have similar feelings to the previous version, I think the face turned out well but the torso is off somehow. I think the line weight is not working in places. Also the shading seems wrong. I feel like maybe it needed more detail, like varied shading and fabric creases, but from experience I wanted to keep simple shapes so it didn’t distract focus from the face. Also interesting that I feel like the whited eyes no longer work in the coloured version, it comes across as very creepy or even being a magical element, like his is some kind of demon.

I made some final adjustments, trying to mute the line thickness of the torso by selectively lightening it, muting some of the colours just a tad, cropping it to help the composition a bit, drawing in some pupils, and darkening out some of the lower half, to distract from what wasn’t working and create an interesting effect.

Relatively pleased with the finished work. I know there are areas to improve and I’m eagre to practise more.

In reflecting on the process, I did use a lot of different references during the drawing. Several times I googled results for men wearing suits to get the lapel right. I looked at a number of different moustaches to get it exactly how I wanted it. At one point I searched “noir detective” just for a general feeling of how to move forward. It was interesting to see how the drawing evolved throughout.