ray charles

soul portraits

Having finished the series of rock'n'roll portraits (see previous blog entries) and having greatly enjoyed drawing them, I made vague plans to do another set. So I sat down with pen and paper and drew up lists of musical heroes and heroines that I wanted to draw. Possible candidates for future series included artists on Tamla Motown (I know, I know, they were two different labels), British bands of the 60s, Atlantic Soul, and Jazz Legends*. The 'Atlantic' set won it — I think I must have been listening to a lot of soul music at the time, but then I always do — and I ploughed ahead with a new batch of illustrations.

I'd drawn maybe half a dozen portraits when a big hungry freelance job came in which sat down to eat sometime in June, consumed July, gobbled up August and polished off the beginning of September for dessert. Before I knew it, a new term had started at college, I was doing much more teaching than I had been previously and the Atlantic series was all but abandoned.

Perhaps this was a good thing. This evening, I've been looking at the fruit(s) of my labours from the start of summer and I realise that some of the images simply aren't up to scratch. So tonight, I've been sorting out the wheat from the chaff, cleaning up hastily scanned artwork, colouring and recolouring some illustrations and discarding others completely.

I've finished four illustrations so far and will post one a day for the next four days. So, enough waffle. Here's Ray Charles...

*I know very little about Jazz if I'm honest. I've tried to 'educate myself' over the summer by buying lots of cheap CDs from the Blue Note back catalogue but I'm still undecided about the merits of this particular art form. I genuinely enjoy some of it (Cannonball Adderly's 'Somethin' Else' and 'GO!' by Dexter Gordon are particularly good) but at times, it can sound like so many angry wasps attacking each other with brass instruments.

apologies, dahlink

blue stuff (finally)

blockhead

At some point in the near future, I'm hoping to produce a colour version of the above with my rainbow-flavoured digital techno paintbox (© Michael Chester 2009), but it's been a while since I posted any new pictures and I was worried that the thousands of people who follow this blog on a daily basis might worry that I'd died or something.

Not that any of them have left comments voicing such concerns.

Bastards.

johnny burnette

Another 'rejected' subject from the Rock 'n' Roll series. Along with his older brother Dorsey, Johhny Burnette was an early rockabilly pioneer. The brothers wrote a number of songs for Rick Nelson including the very wonderful 'It's Late', but Johnny Burnette is perhaps best remembered for the single 'You're Sixteen', a hit record in 1960. He died in a boating accident in 1964, aged just 30.

the stance

This is the Stance. You adopt the Stance in moments of pseudo-anger, like when you ask your girlfriend if she wants toast and she says no but as soon as she smells and subsequently sees the toast that you made for yourself, demands that you surrender some portion of your chargrilled bread snack unto her. Naturally, you don't mind, as it's your girlfriend, but you have to adopt the Stance in order to show your disapproval. Your girlfriend, in turn, adopts the Stance when you act like a fascist dictator in the kitchen or keep forgetting to put money away in an ISA.

To adopt the Stance, you need to put your hands on your hips, then slide them up your body as far as they'll go. This is essentially it, but for added effect you could pout, suck in your cheeks, raise an eyebrow, frown etc. Spend some time getting the hands right, then you can 'freestyle' with the facial expressions...