Damien

Strong features add brooding depth to this portrait.

- Ross Roorda

My subject is a fellow called Damien. I took a few photographs of him on my mobile phone under fluorescent lights. The quality is not great, and the angle I used to shoot the photographs is kind of awkward and distorted. However the image offered a challenge . . . and Damien’s strong features created shadows and an overall dark image.

In this drawing I deliberately overstated the features and pushed the darks as hard as possible.

The beard and elongated shape of the face gave the image a ‘tribal mask’ type of quality, and for this reason I completely obliterated the neck and shoulders and worked the face as an independent shape.