Choosing Content

This exercise was to draw a simple portrait of the Man described in the passage from The Daffodil Affair by Michael Innes.

I read the piece through several times before answering the questions posed.

The Character:  If it were a film the character would be contained and silent - middle-aged, but not old. The weight of the world would be on him, his eyes dark and brooding. Anger simmering inside him but not overt. His face would be worn, his brow furrowed, possibly a Liam Neeson like at the end of Schindler's List.

Clothing: The passage is set in the 2nd world war. The Man would be wearing a worn flannel work suit, probably his only one. He's not wealthy but he is a workaholic, probably a chain smoker. Doesn't take too much care of himself.


Furniture: The desk is important 'the big desk lay islanded in a creeping parallelogram of light', he might have had a lamp and telephone on his desk, an ashtray, pen holder, ashtray, blotter, and maybe a filing cabinet nearby.


In my sketchbook I did some sketches from the Internet of 1930/40s suits and office furniture.

The room is described as like a "room in a shop window, but larger and emptier" - does this mean, exposed or small? Large but empty?

I researched New Scotland Yard in the war and discovered it was in the Norman Shaw Building. The windows high up are 6 or 9 pane sash windows (although the passage describes plate glass). It was close to Big Ben, and could well have looked out towards St Pauls.

A problem area for me was the Light - this is very confusingly described, it's a 'creeping parallelogram of light' and there is a massive shaft of shadow which passes to and fro 'perhaps twenty times', so what's creating a shadow that moves like this. It could be searchlights, but it's clearly daytime. The spring sunshine is described as 'bleak and functional'. Perhaps there is a passage of time involved, so that the scene takes place as the evening becomes night.

The words I was interested in communicating were 'Austere', 'Bleak' and 'Brooding' - this gives me a colour scheme of dark greys, beige, dusty coloured light, shadows and gloom.

A trawl of the internet gave me some pictures to work off, I wanted to include an element of wartime England outside the windows, as I was trawling I had the idea of using the tinted, charcoal quality of old photos and film,

I then turned back to the sketchbook and began to play with different compositions;

In this idea I was thinking about a scene with a locked off camera where the man would dissolve on and off the screen in different positions, but this would have been difficult to realize and wasn't really the 'simple' portrait that the brief asked for. 

In this sketch I used watercolour crayons and pencils - I tried to capture the watery spring sunshine, and the grubbiness of wartime London, with wardens with gas masks climbing on the rubble outside the windows. 

In this, the man is small, dwarfed by his desk (the weight of his work) and drawn to the chaos outside. 

In the first sketch above, I was toying with the idea of having him working, but that wasn't right. In the bottom pen sketch I went for a night-time and searchlight image, a closer portrait of the man's face. 

I ended up working on two different images, and chose vine and stick charcoal and a mid-tone grey pastel paper. 

I decided to add a sense of unease by offsetting the windows and having them off centre, but I'm not sure that this worked, perhaps the desk should have been further to the left, or maybe I should have made the figure central and the windows symmetrical. Not sure, looking at the cropped version. 

cropped to experiment with composition

The use of Charcoal, I hope, created the austere atmosphere I was after, and I'm largely pleased with the back view of the figure, I decided to limit the amount of furniture and stuff on the desk to enhance the feeling of austerity and bleakness. However, I wasn't happy that his face was so small (I was working on A3, so it was difficult to get too much detail in). So below is my 2nd attempt where I went more for the character of the Man. The face is from my imagination, although I used the photos and the sketched face on my mood board as a reference for shadows.

I tried to depict a man who has buried the anger he feels, and it has made him tired and brooding, worn out by his work and the world. I am quite happy with this portrait and I like the view of wartime London from the window, and the searchlights as well as the light on his face, although maybe he could have had darker shadows in his cheeks. I thought that the light from the searchlights would reflect on his face, but I'm not sure it comes across quite right.