Sketch o’the Week

I thought I’d try something different this week and do a sketch from a video as opposed to a photo. This week’s subject is the late action film great Lee Marvin.

I’ve been really enjoying my home theater lately, thanks to a new projector, Blu-Ray player and Netflicks. Netflicks is a great deal, although it’s lifespan is undoubtably limited as within a few years HD content will be downloadable on-demand from a variety of soruces for your HDTV.. It’s actually available now but the technology for fast downloads isn’t quite there yet. There are a limited number of Blu-ray films available right now but many classics are getting transfers to the HD medium, and I’ve been making a point to see some of the great films of yesterday. I’ve seen “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Deliverance”, “Bullitt”, “The Deer Hunter” and a number of other well known and acclaimed films in the last few months that I had never seen before. Last night I watched “The Dirty Dozen” and did the above sketch while watching it. I paused on a single frame to get the basics down but then finished the sketch in low light conditions while enjoying the rest of the film.

Drawing from video is different from photos. You are capturing your overall impression of the subject instead of focusing on the specifics of a given superficial reference. Usually this works best when you then go back to photos to see the static details of the face and use what you’ve learned from working off the moving images as a foundation. In this case I just scanned in the video sketch.

I once had a conversation with the great Mort Drucker about actors in movies and TV today as opposed to yesteryear. He told me he considered the majority of today’s actors to be of a similar type and look, lacking the strong personalities and character of the Cary Grants, Humphrey Bogarts and such of past days. I must say I can see where he is coming from. There are few actors today with the strong features and character of a Lee Marvin.