After finishing with the hot whales, I realised I’d been asked to revisit line drawings of faces from an earlier part of the Drawing1 OCA module and so I recruited some suitable internet models and bashed out a few interpretive copies in conte crayon on A1 flipchart paper. Cheap as chips.

This first one took just five minutes and probably met the brief somewhat, whereas the later ones took rather longer, having not met it at all. There is at least some line visible in this one.

This rather gentle old chap I managed to turn into a Burglar Bill character who seems to be regretting his actions. Maybe he just shimmied down the drainpipe into the arms of the police. My apologies!

Definitely too much nose here, and he’s not looking at us, he’s looking either downwards or inside himself. There are lines though!

Flawlessness is a real challenge. I always feel sorry for the Portrait Artist of the Year people who get the exquisite beauty as their sitter instead of the craggy geezer on the next platform! There isn’t much to be seen of this woman but I chased those eyes all over the paper until I had them as right as I could get them. Not so many lines now, many more smudges.

My tilt is all wrong and so is her lip but actually I think she looks rather more defiant in my version of her than in the photo, and I hope she’d like that.

The first of three iterations of this man’s image. Again I haven’t quite got the tilt of his head, and his nose is way too big and too far down his face. I had another go.

This time he doesn’t look so kindly and when I posted him to my OCA Facebook group, ‘axe murderer’ sprang to some minds! Another person suggested he was simply revealing different parts of his personality in these various presentations. I said, somewhat rashly, that I’d bring out his ‘Aww kitten!’ face next. Brace yourself.

I give you, Beardie Man Loves his Cat!

Barring some re-working, this may be the end of the Drawing 1 (level 4) module. It’s essentially term one of a three year degree that has taken 15 months of a nine year epic. Painting comes next and I’m aiming to be a little less tardy with that!