For this exercise I was asked to use my imagination and the skills I have learnt to draw someone I’ve seen momentarily. 

I decided to draw my 7 year old sons new PE teacher. My son was very excited about his new PE teacher after his first day back at school and spent the evening speaking about him, I felt like I had conjured up an image of him in my head already. However the next morning my son pointed him out to me, I didn’t actually meet him but I did spot him from across the playground.  

I learnt from my son that Mr Samual was very young, he was very cool and wore Nike sports clothing, that he told the kids funny jokes and he was kind and didn’t shout at anyone. 

My son clearly admired this man, which made me think straight away about the work of Elizabeth Peyton, who was known for creating portraits of the people she most admired, many of whom she had never met. Below is an example of one of her works of the musician Eminem. An artist she admired greatly because of his vulnerability in his music. 

https://www.moma.org/artists/8042?=undefined&page=&direction=

I felt I had enough information about this man to begin my drawing, however I was nervous to start drawing without anything to observe. I therefore started by looking at myself in the mirror in order to decide upon a pose and an angle to position Mr Samuel’s head. 

I started by doing a rough outline of the basic shapes and features of his head, whilst looking at myself in the mirror. I then proceeded to add tone with my charcoal. I thought about the darkest areas of tone being the eye sockets at either side of the nose. I thought about the lips being darker than the skin and where the shadow and the light might fall. I was aware that Mr Samuel was very young (I’m guessing early 20s) so I was conscious about keeping his skin smooth and subtle whilst keeping his features large. 

Whilst drawing I wanted to make Mr Samual look kind, I did this by focusing on how I could make his eyes look kind, I did this by dropping them down slightly and trying to make them look like he was focusing on something. 

Overall I am really pleased with my drawing. I was really worried about producing a drawing that I wasn’t also observing. I did not think I could do it. However what I found was, because I didn’t know exactly how my person looked there was no pressure to get everything right. Instead I tried to focus on my persons personality instead. Something Elizabeth Peyton often strives for, rather than just the physical features she tries to portray their personality and their greatness in her works. It is also clear that without even meaning too, my drawing style has been influenced by Peytons. 

Whilst I can see that my Mr Samuel probably doesn’t look like a real person, as I have made several mistakes such as the nose facing slightly the wrong direction. I am proud of myself for managing to put together a portrait without observing it too. This I hope will give me more confidence in my future work to trust myself when making marks rather than being paranoid of getting things wrong.