Robert Kennedy portrait
Jun 6th, 2008 by J. O'Brien
Saturday marks the 40th anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s
assassination. Today’s NYTimes had an op-ed section of essays written
by his children. The essays feature nine illustrated portraits of
Kennedy done by Leanne Shapton, Andrea Ventura, Tina Berning, Vivienne Flesher,
Thomas Libetti, Laura Carlin, Paul Davis, Brian Cronin, and Isabelle
Arsenault.
Feeling left out and a little
somber on the anniversary, I decided to have a try at it using the same
observational process I’m using for my thesis. I think I used the same reference as Andrea Ventura.
I was 6 when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. There is this foggy
memory of me sitting on the floor in the living room in front of the TV
watching the news. I could feel that my parents were sad, maybe they
were crying (my mom anyway, my dad never cried). I’ve always connected
this memory to John Kennedy’s assassination but I was not quite 2 at
that time so maybe it was Robert Kennedy’s death.
UPDATE: Here’s the original sketch with the "Jack Unruh" distortion I get from using one eye as a starting point and drawing the rest of the face from there. Also, due to poor planning, I had to draw one ear on the next sketchbook page.
Love this drawing James. Is it pencil or graphite stick? how come it looks so like him when you stretched it out but not in the original?
BTW what’s “Jack Unruh distortion”?
Thanks Dave, actually the original drawing is the “stretched” one. I corrected the distortion using Photoshop, creating the blue line version. The original sketch was done in a moleskin sketchpad with a 3B graphite pencil. Jack Unruh is an illustrator who begins his sketches by drawing one eye and moving out to sketch the entire face using that first eye as a reference point. This introduces distortion while also allowing for a representational rendering. His work can be seen here: http://www.jackunruh.com/home.html
Wow, really interesting. Must try that. Is there a book he discussed the technique in? Yep I got that the black and white was the original – do you deliberately draw it longer or is it just the way it develops naturally? I wouldn’t have thought it would work as a realistic portrait and would have started again, and yet it’s spot on! weird. Is that a graphite stick or wooden pencil?