A few weeks ago I was contacted by a PhD student completing a history thesis on Cornelius O’Brien at the University of Limerick. He had a sketch made of Cornelius which got destroyed by his nephew, by accident of course 🙂 He wanted me to draw a new portrait of this historic figure. All he had as a reference was an old etching. He needed the drawing completed within a week in time for his presentation. I managed to move a few projects around and finish the drawing in time, so the client was delighted.
The client gave me another photo of a typical men hair style from the Victorian era of the 1850s as the etching was very unclear around his head. I worked in the size of 38 x 25 cm with black graphite pencils. As always I worked on Fabriano 5 paper which is fantastic at withstanding a lot of layers of pencil. A lot of the drawing was down to my own interpretation which I thoroughly enjoyed. I created a line sketch at first and then detailed the portrait in layers.
The client was very pleased with the outcome and wrote me an email upon receiving the drawing too:
Hi Ivana, I am speechless at how perfect the sketch is and I can’t thank you enough for this….Just letting you know I received the drawing yesterday afternoon. Thank you so much. Earlier this week I was a nervous wreck because of what happened to my work but with your help, this became a central piece in my academic review presentation which I came away feeling it went well. I will even be using it in a presentation for a talk on the O’Brien family for the opening of an O’Brien’s Tower that was restored in Liscannor. Thank you so much for this.
Colm, County Clare, Ireland