ford nation? by donny nguyen

#portrait

I haven’t done an illo or a portrait in quite some time and this idea has been stewing in my head for a while. Perhaps I’m late to the party on it but methinks that somehow it’s going to get re-started come October, maybe even well before then. Mealsothinks that somehow this will not be used for his campaign. Maybe because of the colour? I can’t quite put my finger on why not…

matt berninger

i played around with all manner of colouring for this after i brought it into photoshop and while i found certain results interesting, i opted for the most minimal. here were a few of those experiments.

decent contrast here but the details of the original drawing kind of got lost.

another alternative:

i tried to let the background provide some contrast and restore some of the detail.

overall, i actually liked the process that went into achieving the two draft versions but i didn’t like that i lost the detail that i feel needs to be seen. finding that process was a happy accident, just not one that jives with this portrait i think. i guess the lesson for me was that i can’t always be calling an audible on the final output. i should work on planning more…maybe. matt berninger of the national.

robin

portrait of robin pecknold. before i learnt that a certain band’s new album will be released this saturday, fleet foxes‘s new album was probably the one i was anticipating most. i’m currently rotating between in rainbows, high violet and fleet foxes. two out of three ain’t bad, right? maybe if i work on an illustration of the national, they’ll announce / release a new album? at the rate albums are released these days (and i’m not complaining), probably not. but here’s to hoping? i might post the process later but there wasn’t much behind it though a wee bit of “undocumented” thought went into the colouring.

leslie nielsen

leslie nielsen passed away on the 28th. he kind of fell out focus (at least with me) but understandably so considering how old he was – how many people keep working after a certain point? i kind of grew up on his movies in that his were the comedies that were sort of prevalent / popular when i was young and my dad loved them. and i watched what he watched. who didn’t see airplane? or the naked gun movies?

i had no idea how prolific nielsen was. he was in more than a hundred films and appeared in more than fifteen hundred tv programs. that’s just crazy. he lived a pretty decently long life (eighty four years), has stars on the canadian and hollywood walks of fame, and is an officer of the order of canada. rest in peace. i won’t call you shirley.

basia bulat

basia plays the guitar, autoharp, banjo, ukele, sax, and flute. autoharp! i really like the arrangements in her songs – so many layers to try and zero in on. i find it really funny that she cashed some student loans to record music while she was in montreal (she’s originally from london). i guess when it’s to record with howard bilerman, you really don’t do anything other than what she did though, ha ha. basia bulat in moleskine.

jd salinger

a quick one. not much to say that everyone probably doesn’t already know. jerome david salinger in moleskine.

outside the bars

i’m still working out the process so i thought i’d take a shortcut and reference a photo i found online (and the purists shiver!). i think i would’ve liked a slightly more textured background but what can i say? i’m still figuring a few things out. i fiddled with this more than i intended to so i just drew the line. elliott smith, hand drawn, then coloured digitally.

irving penn

mr. penn passed away this week. i’m not very knowledgeable on the subject photography in general but i think it’s safe to say the he was one of the pioneering fashion photographers whose body of work is quite vast and impressive. his portraits were so very amazing, especially considering how he chose to light them. i’m glad he lived a full life. it seems that his stuff when produced was too ahead of its time to be appreciated fully but i like to think that he lived long enough to see it understood and appreciated.

st. vincent

st vincent has an album coming out soon and i think i’m looking forward to it (i try not to do this because the albums invariably end up failing to deliver). the strangers sounds pretty solid though so hopefully that’s a sign of things to come. regardless, her voice is pretty amazing. a great bit about her first album, marry me, is that its name supposedly stems from arrested development. annie clark in moleskine, 8×10″

request iv…assuaging someone’s narcissistic urge

actually, the word she used was sate but hey. she tactfully asked for a portrait but i thought i’d subject her to my wacky placement choices. sucka! actually, i hope she likes this, ha ha. i picked from a few facebook photos and am assuming her drummer boy better half was the image capturing apparatus. ballpoint pen, 10 x 9″, in moleskine.