Thursday 12 April 2007

The Villains in my Home Town. part 3.

T he technique used for court sketching is usually pastels or some similar quick-sketching medium. But my pal Pete Mullins had gone in using the pantone© markers of the graphic designer, which was an interesting approach I thought. Nobody sets out to make a career of court sketching, or at least I don't think so, therefore it's interesting to see artists from different sub-disciplines moonlighting here. For instance, in many of my images you can tell that I'm at heart a cartoonist. An artist who is on other days a sculptor, or a landscape painter, would approach the task in quite a different way from me.
I followed Pete's lead as I didn't have time to give it much thought (i.e. I was needed tomorrow morning), nor did I have a box of pastels handy for that matter. My own way was very linear to start with; pencil and then tighten that up best I can as after a couple of outings I knew they'd always zoom in on the face. Then I'd take it to the canteen where I could spread out with my tools, outline with a fine marker and then fill with pantone colours based on colour notes I'd made in pencil.



This pair set a sleeping vagrant on fire for a laugh. The man died in hospital. In agony I guess. The boy on left is pixilated because he was underage. There's a paragraph at the foot of an earlier post about the pixilation of faces



Later I started to experiment with a quite different way of making the sketch, by working quickly on ordinary typing paper with Pantones of very subtle muted tints. the paper would be constantly soaked so that the end result had the look of a watercolour painting. And all done with markers. This enabled me to get away from that cartoon look toward something more photographic almost.



But then I missed some of that character insight I was getting in the earlier style.



This man abducted a schoolgirl and raped her.

*****

If my courtroom sketches are starting to make you feel that Australia isn't a safe place to walk about in, check these out. Just in from my pal White, writer of the Playwright and other works of note. This is one of the country's best beaches.



And these are the boys who live on it.



Talking about nasties, we have occasionally in this blog visited the subject of spiders which eat ya. Check out this one, or don't , if necrotic flesh upsets you.

******

From Hayley Campbell: "harking back to your post on Feiffer, THEY'VE DRAFTED MUNRO!"
German army drafts four-week-old baby
Tue Apr 10, 2007 BERLIN (Reuters) -
The German army sent a draft notice to a four-week-old baby named Lucio, ordering him to report for duty within the next 10 days, before realising it had blundered.
******

Youtube: Shat and Joe Jackson perform Common People
(thanks, mr j)

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6 Comments:

Blogger James Robert Smith said...

I'll bet even the grass in Australia is poisonous.

Hey. What happened to your dog? Were you able to get rid of it? Did it die? Maybe something bit it. (As a mailman, I have all kinds of crimson fantasies for the barking little bastards.)

12 April 2007 at 01:25:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Eddie Campbell said...

oi!
that's Man's Best Friend you're talking about.

eddie

12 April 2007 at 01:27:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll add that Palm Cove, in far north Queensland, is actually a very nice place to visit and highly recommended. Just don't swim in the sea. Or stand near the sea.

Apparently Joey Pants visits at least twice a year...

12 April 2007 at 04:26:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think I would be too upset to draw these faces properly (especially after reading the captions of what they've done), that I would be tempted to add horns or fans on the portraits.

12 April 2007 at 05:30:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Eddie Campbell said...

thanks , Tita,
You're the first to say it.
god knows how Judges remain sane.

and i've only just scratched the surface.

worst villains still to come

eddie

12 April 2007 at 06:27:00 GMT-5  
Blogger James Robert Smith said...

Re: recluse spider.

That is one of the only nasty critters we have here in the States. I have two pals who have been bitten by the brown recluse. Apparently, reactions vary. One friend who was bitten is very fat, and his bulk basically diluted the venom and he got a small rash (he was bitten on the abdomen) and lost a small flap of skin. My other friend who was bitten by a brown recluse also suffered only a minor rash and small sore. This guy was also bitten by a black widow spider not long after, with rather more severe consequences.

12 April 2007 at 13:01:00 GMT-5  

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