1h – The Reign of Terror
The Reign of Terror
This is a wonderfully atmospheric serial, an old-fashioned spy drama, I needed to get in that tension, the image of the guillotine. Then I saw this picture of Susan and Barbara – what a juxtaposition… So I based my sketch around that photo. But how to do it? I’ve done a fair few pastel drawings so far, so how about something different? Taking a cue from the maps and prints that appear in the Historicals around this time, I decided to do an ink drawing. No the last time I did any ink-drawing, it was when I had a terrible cold, so wasn’t going into the School of Art for a week… ended up sat there stippling for a week. So, no stippling then. The thing is, It’s a picture that lends itself to some very soft modelling, and here I am working on it with a very linear medium! Sketching out the proportions in pencil, I then did most of the drawing with an ink pen (Parker 51, probably the most beautiful writing implement ever mass-produced!), strengthening some of the lines with a fine marker pen (Sharpie, yuk.). After this I went to block out the background with an ink-pot and pain-brush, but discovered that watering down some ink and washing it about really softened the image of Susan and Barbara, heightening the delicate look. I’ve framed them with some lines that are suggestive of the shape of the guillotine, too.
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on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 12:33 pm and is filed under season 01.
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