Strawberry fields forever

This piece was yet another leg of my Magical Mystery Tour of art.

I don't (and historically known that I can't) do portraits. Yet a few days ago, I saw the poster hanging above my study desk and thought inexplicably, "I'd like to draw that." So I did, over the past 3 nights. How did that happen? Dunno. God lor.

So many things could have gone wrong. In fact, I could have butchered each of the Fab Four, if not all of them. I started with John Lennon and when that was complete, the excitement ran through me that I might actually pull this off.

Paul McCartney was next and for a while there, he looked more like Golem from Lord of the Rings. I feel that it's a lot harder to get likeness with front facing faces than side profiles. Then I moved on to Ringo. Ringo was the most fun and the easiest of the four since his features are so distinctive.

By the time I reached George Harrison, I thought, well, this can't be too hard, I've already practised drawing three! As always, I spoke too soon. For some reason, he kept looking more like a young Rick Springfield (I guess that shows my age!) Again, I don't know why. But in the end, I think I did manage to get some Harrison likeness there.

Since the reference photo was in black in white, I had intended to do a sepia toned drawing, but halfway through John Lennon, I decided that it would be more interesting to give their jackets colour tints instead. I think it was a good call, it gave the drawing some depth.

In total, I only used 10 coloured pencils for this drawing. In case you're interested, they are:

Derwent Lightfast: 

• Warm Grey
• Chocolate
• Black
• Midnight Black (John Lennon's jacket)
• Blue Violet (Ringo's jacket)
• Forest (George Harrison's jacket)

Faber-Castell Polychromos :

• Nougat
• Van Dyke Brown
• Dark Sepia

Caran d'Ache Luminance:

• Raw Umber 10%
  

The paper I used is Canson "C" a grain which is a heavyweight 180gsm drawing paper with fine grain. A friend had given it to me and I'd not tried it. I used it only because it was the only white paper of A3 size that I had. It turned out to be really nice for coloured pencils, although you can't layer too much on it. The bright white is lovely for portraits.

Special shoutout to my son who's celebrating his 20th birthday today in camp - he enlisted for National Service two days ago. Where did all the time go? Didn't seem that long ago when he was watching the Yellow Submarine and shouting "The Blue Meanies!"

Happy birthday, Andre - love you lots ♥