Saturday, December 11, 2010

Youth and Age

The bus ride from downtown Florence to the airport takes twenty minutes.



Across from me, a mother tenderly holds her four-month-old baby girl. The baby rests on her mother’s shoulder. The little girl lifts her head from time to time, enjoying the feeling of balancing as the bus moves.



A man stands on the bus, looking out a window. His eyes scan the traffic. He glances at the people around him and smiles at the baby. He has taken a long journey inside his skin and bones since his mother held him on her shoulder.

7 comments:

  1. amazing that you managed to do that on public transport, I find it so hard to draw a moving target.

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  2. Very nice grouping of lights and darks on the older man's face. I also like how when the light is blown out to white, the modeling takes place in the shadows.

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  3. I can't draw when somebody watching over my shoulder, but you did such a nice pictures!

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  4. I find drawing on trains the worst, which is odd because I assumed that since they're on tracks it'd be a smoother ride!

    I love that portrait of the man. For a sketch done on a bus it's an astonishing portrait.

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  5. Both portraits are lovely! Did you use water soluble colour pencils?

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  6. Thanks, everybody.

    Marianne, yes, they're both done in water-soluble colored pencils. I only had time to quickly lay in the man's face before the bus arrived, so I finished that sketch from memory on the airplane.

    I showed the sketch of the baby to the mom at the end of the bus ride so she'd know why I was staring so intently at her baby.

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