Portrait of Elvis Presley

This Sunday, the celebrity spotlight is on.... Elvis Presley. You may remember that he made a cameo appearance two weeks ago, when Ann-Margret was our featured celebrity.

                       

 8 x 10 inches (20 x 25 cm)

Graphite and charcoal on Canson Grain

I like to put in as much detail as possible, especially when drawing the face whether I am using graphite or charcoal. I like to use charcoal for the skin tones because it seems to have the texture of real skin. On the other hand, I like to give the eyes more detail. I tried to draw the eyes and other features using graphite pencils while charcoal is used for the skin tones.

Above is the result of the experiment. This portrait was done last year. The downside is that the glare on the eyes really stands out when viewed at certain angles which I find quite annoying. Also, when viewed in certain lighting conditions, the portrait ended up looking ghostly. I think I'm going back to the traditional principle of working with one medium for an artwork.

                                  (Image is from Doctormacro)

 A shot of Elvis' famous rock and roll dance number in the film

                 "Jailhouse Rock"              

Elvis Presley is one of the music industry's legendary performers. He also crossed over to the movie industry with as much success. His movies are mostly musically oriented, although his first film, "Love Me Tender" has a more serious note than many of his later and more popular ones. The well known song of the same title was only used as its theme, not sung the usual way in front of an audience like in "Blue Hawaii" and "Viva Las Vegas". The largest portion of Elvis' films is quite light in terms of plot. They primarily serve to present our featured celebrity's rock and roll prowess. Nevertheless, they are really well worth watching.