Over Christmas I was busy with my dissertation but now and then I really just wanted to draw something quick so decided to continue working in my book of portraits. After looking back on past work involving Russia’s last imperial family, the Romanovs, I chose to revisit this within my current work.
I started with some quick, rough pencil sketches of the family members before painting ink portraits of the family. I’m quite happy with most of these portraits and believe I have captured most of the family member quite well. There are a few I’m not entirely happy with, however I do find it rather difficult to draw a person exactly how they look and am mostly pleased overall.
After these portraits, I moved on to drawing more full bodied portraits using a blue coloured pencil. I really like the outcome of these, particularly the two featuring the Romanov sisters, however I did find it difficult to put lots of detail in some of them, especially the group family portrait. I showed these to one of my tutors while discussing ideas for my project illustrating Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and received positive feedback. We discussed possibly combining the two and giving Alice a Russian twist and using it as a reflection of the Russian Revolution or setting it in other political fuelled backdrops. This is something I think I am definitely going to explore as I am very interesting in the Romanov family and the Russian Revolution, and have also read a few books on the subject.
Scott Keenan Illustration 