It's A Likeness, Pilgrim: Attempting To Sketch John Wayne

It's amazing how much you can fit in a day. I managed to do a ton of yard work, take the family to Hobby Lobby for some creative supplies, get home and hit some cleaning chores, then sit down to work on some of my sketches for the "Drawing Board" show. I'm still adding to my Western Film Heroes series, and a list like that wouldn't have been complete without John Wayne.

I used a terracotta sketching pencil to do my initial warm-up sketch.

I did my next sketch with a Sumi brush and crimson India Ink. Similar to the Lee Van Cleef sketch I did a couple of weeks ago, I didn't do any initial breakdowns before I did this one. It's fun to just dive into the ink really quick and see how accurate my hand/eye coordination is.

Of course, these sketches moved me towards my final ink drawing, which I did with my trusty Sable and Super Black India Ink.

Like most of the work I do, I would say that this is only a likeness of John Wayne. I just don't think I'm skilled enough to do anything that's dead-on. Maybe if I'd commit to something over a period of time, really work on it for day and days... but that's just not the kind of time I have.

As I said in other posts, I'm not too happy to have these works appear in a show. I just don't think they're good enough for that. They're fine as hobby pieces, but gallery works... no dice.

As always, I hope you dig and I thank you for taking the time to put your eyes on my sketches. If you have a moment, why not leave me a comment? It's a great way to make a new connection.

Some "Van Cleef" Sketch Action

I haven't had a lot of time to draw lately. Since I finished my Series-2 ATC set, I've been slammed over in "ad-land." Honestly, by the time I get home I'm pretty burned out and I just want to rest my brain. My wife motivated me to lay down some ink by getting me a nice, glass-top drafting table for Father's Day. I've been itching to sit down and give it a test drive since Sunday, so tonight I made some time to sit down for sketch.

I've mentioned in a few posts that I'm working on a series of western movie sketches for an exhibit titled "The Drawing Board." The goal is to do do really quick sketches, then develop one of them into a more finished piece. One of our sketch focuses is "American Heroes" and my western sketches are a part of that particular category. A couple of weeks ago, I did a quick sketch of Clint Eastwood for that series. Tonight I took a stab at Lee Van Cleef.

Since I hadn't drawn in a while I decided to do three sketches, the first two being very, very rough and quick. The first was done with a simple sketching pencil, with pretty soft lead, mainly to loosen my hand up.

The second sketch was done even faster, with a blown out water color brush. I had picked up some sepia india ink, so I decided to give that a run through. The brush really was the pits, but I still kind of dig the variation I got from the pencil sketch. It was a nice way to find the hard shadows.

Finally, I dropped some light pencils on a fresh sheet, then started hacking away with black india ink and my #3 Sable. I spent a bit more time on this final sketch. It's not dead-on, but I think it's definitely got a likeness of Van Cleef. This piece almost seems to be a combination of the two previous sketches.

After I felt like I had laid down enough black, I went back and added a really quick wash to help enhance the light-play on his face. I think it helped.

All-in-all, I had somewhere near an hour and half in all the sketches. This fits right in with the parameters of "The Drawing Board" gallery series. I've got quite a few more of the screen western heroes to sketch out. I'm having a lot of with them, so I hope you folks dig them.