Helena Christensen
Medium: Pencil on paper
Size: A3
This is an image of Helena Christensen taken by Michel Comte. I started drawing this picture while I was working as an English teacher in Taiwan. I was teaching 6 days a week from 8 o'clock in the morning until 9 o'clock at night. It was a tough period in my life and this image helped me to get back in touch with my artistic side and gave me a welcome escape from the hectic hustle and busle of Taichung city.
I finished the drawing a few months later after relocating to Cape Town, South Africa. I was very happy with the completed drawing and the overwhelming positive response from friends and family spurred me on to develop my painting skills and to keep on drawing beautiful woman.
So thanks to lovely Helena, who is always mind-blowingly sexy, and also mister Comte for creating such awesome photographs!
Tione
Medium: Pencil on paper
Size: A3
“Portrait of the model Tione, big-haired and thumbs hooked into belt loops. She looks like some sort of Egyptian goddess.” Richard Baily (Photographer)
I first spotted this image online as a thumbnail in a preview for a Black+White issue. That thumbnail image kept me going to the bookstores on a weekly basis until I finally laid eyes on the A4 printed version.
When I draw or paint something, I like to be challenged and this picture of Tione, with that wild hair posed a real challenge for me. Let's just say it took me many late nights to get that hair right, and no I didn't use an erasor. Have a closer look by zooming in...
Thanks to Tione, who stood so proud, and rightly so! Also Richard Baily, the photographer. You guys rocked my world!
Suzy a.k.a “The Pink Lady”
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 1m x 1.5m
“The focus is on a young girl. That's all it is. She's beautiful.”
David Bellemere (Photographer)
As with all my paintings and drawings, this image haunted me until I finished the painting months later. It becomes an obsession and I become a slave to the desire to create a painting or drawing of the image. For months it is just me and the image holed up in my studio, like new lovers. The obsession is only banished after I have finished the work.
She is currently on display in our dining room. Always provocative, alluring and eternally asking a question with eyes almost hidden behind wild blond hair.
Mister Bellemere, you are a genius!
Girl-In-Kitchen
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 1m x 1.5m
The photographer of this image, Katy Grannan, finds her subjects by placing ads for models between the ages of 18 and 22 in her local newspaper. She photographs them, clothed and unclothed, in their family homes, producing vulnerable, herioc portraits of youth's last tender gasps.
She thinks people want to be photographed for the same reasons she wants to photograph them: because they want to live a little, because they want to break some rules – and they want proof of it.
I love the way the subjects' head is framed by the doorway to create a halo. How your eyes are pulled along a path from her extended hand upwards towards the eyes and then back down towards the floor where the gap between the hands draws you further in to notice the loose fitting vest and tight shorts. How old is she and what is she thinking about?
