City Types
The brief for this college project was to go out into Dublin city to sketch different types of people with the aim to create a full range of portraits on one type of Dublin person.
I chose to focus on street performers because not only do they not mind having their photo taken or portrait drawn, they provide plenty of visual interest be it in their instruments, performance or clothes. I also admire that they have the guts to go out in public and perform for people who may critise or hurl abuse at them.
In Dublin there is a great tradition of busking and street performance. While many of them weren't particularly good, there were a lot that were incredibly talented. From the early teen rock band who reminded me of early Beatles to a girl guitar duo who's beautiful angelic singing made me stay out in a rain soaked Grafton St to the cool slide guitar guy sitting quietly on his amp.
I had a bit of a quandry while doing the project. Do I represent performers whom I didn't appreciate? I thought that if I didn't then I wouldn't be true to what is out there but if I did then I'd be happy to draw them as they somehow deserved to be immortalised in my project! In the end I went for the latter. I just couldn't justify drawing someone whose performance I didn't appreciate.
My process for creating the card cut-outs was quite drawn out. I drew the characters in pastel. The reason for this was because it's very like chalk which is the media of choice for drawing on streets. Initially I wanted to actually draw the characters on the pavement but the detail and quality of line and colour just weren't possible unless I made them massive. So pastel on paper it was.
I aimed to match the colours and style to the music that was played by the character. When I finished drawing the character I would scan the images and process them in Photoshop. Drawing with pastel is very messy. When I was happy with the image, I printed them out and stuck them onto card. I created a little card stand so I could put them back out into the street and photograph them on the street reincarnated as pastel performers.
My process for creating the card cut-outs was quite drawn out. I drew the characters in pastel. The reason for this was because it's very like chalk which is the media of choice for drawing on streets. Initially I wanted to actually draw the characters on the pavement but the detail and quality of line and colour just weren't possible unless I made them massive. So pastel on paper it was.
I aimed to match the colours and style to the music that was played by the character. When I finished drawing the character I would scan the images and process them in Photoshop. Drawing with pastel is very messy. When I was happy with the image, I printed them out and stuck them onto card. I created a little card stand so I could put them back out into the street and photograph them on the street reincarnated as pastel performers.
