Just to sort of mix things up a bit, I decided to take an online portrait workshop with Lewis Rossignol. I’ve always admired his brand of odd, esoteric, and seemingly stream-of-conscious mixed media portraits of celebrities.
I’m just getting started, so here’s what we’ve done so far…
The first exercise is kind of a warm up: try to draw a portrait of a recognizable person showing as little detail as possible, while still maintaining the core essence of the person. Can you guess any of the celebs that I sketched?
Some of these may have become more recognizable with the addition of color, but regardless of whether or not they’re successful characterizations, it was a fun and surprisingly difficult challenge to kick things off.
The second exercise was to select a photo of a well known celebrity, and draw that person four times, starting in a different area each time. I chose Willem Dafoe – he certainly lends himself well to characterization with the angularity of his features, his almost vampire-like smile and teeth, and that intensity of gaze. This wasn’t a difficult challenge for me: I regularly jump right to pen without sketching out in pencil. I’m comfortable doing observational drawings this way.
His character almost begs for exaggeration, and my drawings came off especially comic-book-like.
My first shot at this exercise seemed almost too easy, so I gave it another go, this time selecting Eugene Levy. His comically bewildered expression and those impressively huge eye brows perched over a stark pair of black, circular lenses seem to me made to be drawn.
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As the title implies, this is definitely something completely different than the usual sketches I post on this blog. The workshop is intended to shake things up a little, and although I don’t intend to draw “like” Rossignol, I do intend to find out what I can learn from his drawing process. My initial exercises come off a bit like editorial cartoons or magazine illustration; considering that was a part of my professional life at one time, I guess that should come as no real surprise.
I did work entirely in ink, other than adding watercolor to one sketch. I used several different pens: a fountain pen, a fude nib pen, Uni-Ball Vision, Micron 0.1, and a fat permanent marker. The paper is nothing fancier than the pages of a cheap sketchbook. More to come…
Just Sketching 
I recognized Keanu Reeves (middle left, the one with long dark hair and beard) and Rami Malek (bottom left), but no-one else, unfortunately. I don’t watch much TV.
😁