Portrait of a Wedding

This recent pencil portrait was commissioned by a friend of the couple's children to celebrate their wedding day. Also as a loving tribute to the groom, who sadly was terminally ill at the time of the wedding. As such, it was quite an emotional piece to be involved in and I felt a weight of responsibility to do the photo and occasion justice. 

What I hope comes through is the happiness and affection from the day caught in the original photograph.

To commission a pencil portrait or to see more of my work, please visit artbylukebennett.com.

2b or not 2b? Actually, mainly 4b and 5b... Pencil Portraiture.

Above is a recently completed pencil portrait. It proved relatively challenging as the photo that I was using for reference was very small, blurry and lacked detail. Normally I'd avoid doing artwork from photos of a certain size or image quality, but sometimes as an artist you don't have the luxury of choice.

There and Back Again: An Artist's Blog, By Luke Baggins (Bennett)...

Whilst not quite the 13 months that Frodo was away from The Shire, it has been a fair while since I last enjoyed the comfort of my trusty old blog.

Whilst I'd love to claim that in all those months I've been off vanquishing the lands of evil and darkness and making a positive contribution to the world of men, all-the-while avoiding the subtle but determined advances of my chubby best friend, that would be a lie.

The truth is that, regretfully, I haven't had the time or energy to devote to painting and drawing that I would have liked. Regular 12 hour days at work certainly haven't helped. But, for the immediate future, I now have more time on my hands than I know what to do with. As such I've decided to start doing more of what I love doing, resolving to take more photos, do more drawings, and to generally nurture and regain some creativity in my life.

The drawing below is the first result of that resolve, and the first sketch I've attempted in about 11 months. 

An original hand drawn pencil sketch of every Tolkien fan's favourite villain, Gollum, as depicted by Andy Serkis in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies.

I think in total it probably took between 5 and 8 hours, although I'm not totally sure as that was spread out over a number of evenings.

I approached it in a slightly more methodical way than I normally do, focusing on small areas at a time before moving onto another. Usually I have a habit of doing a bit of everything all at once in a slightly disorganised but arguably more artistic way.

I'm quite pleased with the results. Let me know what you think in the comments.

As always, more of my work can be seen/bought/commissioned at www.artbylukebennett.com