This drawing re-works familiar turf… I worked from
memory, with minimal underdrawing, using a drybrush technique, Windsor Newton
Sable dipped in India ink. At, that’s what it looks like.
Now HERE is Tony Soprano, if
not James Gandolfini. Here I am attempting a specific likeness of a specific
character, not merely drawing one of my “clones of desire” (a concept
articulated by the brilliant philosopher Dale Lazarof, writer of “Sticky” and “Manly”).http://prismcomics.org/profile.php?id=1496
It also puts on display my
continuing struggles with Photoshop. Basically I did a fake pen and ink
drawing. The only benefit I derived from using the program instead of pen and
ink on paper was the endless ability to re-size and re-do. Nothing to sneeze at
for sure (the lack thereof an ongoing frustration with the real thing) but
there’s more to the program than that. Hell, I’ve taken a couple of classes in
the damn thing. I just can’t make myself practice using the program
consistently enough to get adept in it.
This
drawing is not intended as an affront to Gandolfini or his mourning friends and
family. I like to think he would have approved, based on the scene in
“Sopranos” where his seated character displayed a hard-on through his pants
when contemplating his psychiatrist.
Welcome to our third month
of daily dickery, with no end in sight.
This
drawing proves the point of yesterday’s essay. It was drawing four days prior
to yesterday’s Gandolfini coincidentally commemorative sketch, and is of the
same type of man typified by James Gandolfini, without actually being an
attempt to portray the actor or any of the characters he created.
This drawing, obviously, was
drawing the day James Gandolfini’s death was announced.
This saddened me, as I have
been hot for him for years, and enjoyed his performances in various films and
TV series. I especially like him in “Enough Said”; I thought he looked
especially good wearing a beard.
I thought the movie sucked,
in so far as his sex scenes with Julia Louis-Dreyfus were really chaste, almost
prudish. I wanted more flesh, more action, like maybe she would lean over an
suck on his nipple. Oh well; the opportunity is lost forever. Maybe there is
juicy material in the out takes; somehow I doubt it.
I am
aware that this sketch looks nothing particular like Mr. G; I was drawing one
of my “types”, my “clones of desire”, when I got the news. It’s a co-incidence
that the man in the sketch matches Gandolfini in his baldness and paunchiness,
in that these are attributes I find attractive anyway, which is why I find Mr.
G. attractive.
