Portaits of Pontus

Not counting myself, my good friend Pontus is probably the person I've portrayed the most during the last year. He's not just a good friend but a good musician and songwriter too and you should check his myspace out, the songs of course, but also the concert dates, because he and his band really are something.

Acrylics and oilpastel on black paper, about 28*18 cm

This is the oldest one of the portraits I'm posting here, probably more or less exactly one year old. I painted it in a period when I was really into creating shape and shadows in this kind of backwards way, where they are accomplished by leaving the backound blank. This was very much inspired by the artist Francis Bacon. Bacon is great, check out his myspace.

Spraypaint and oilpastels on black paper, approx. 50*25 cm.

Did this one after a photo. A more shapely approach I guess. I was into spraycans and the types of effects seen here at this point, and luckily my brother had left a huge- ass box of them in my room.

Spraypaint, oilpastels and Posca- pencil on black paper, approx. 50*25 cm.

Done the same day as the above one. I think the colours came out a whole lot better in this one.

Pencil on paper, A3- size.

So, yeah, my days as a tele- researcher are coming to a close. Sitting in front of a screen and talking to people who mostly treat like you're a real pain in the ass, six hours a day is not a lot of fun. I quickly realized that the whole challenge of this kind of labour is escaping the here and now as effectively as possible. A great way to do that is drawing. These are some the drawings I've done at work recently.

These were all done with a ball-point pen on A4- paper. The top two are drawn from reproductions of paintings in a book about Rembrandt, a self portait and a portrait of his second wife Hendrijke Stoffels. Notice here disfigured arm, what a freak. The bottom one is a selfportrait.
Long post. But I know you want it!

/Theo