I could never get into poetry.  Try as I might, I just couldn’t lose myself into it like some people seem to.  Alfred, Lord Tennyson just happens to be a poet, but I couldn’t tell you anything that he’d written.  He’s probably very good at what he did, as he’s one of Lincolnshire’s most famous alumni.  So why would I draw someone who I don’t really know?

Well, he just has a good face.  I was in Lincolnshire at the time, stuck not knowing what to draw.  So I googled “Famous people from Lincolnshire”, Margaret Thatcher was one of the top results, but I thought maybe not.  And then Alfred came up, and I instantly thought, “this guy has a good face”.

You don’t have to be ugly or attractive to have good face, you just need a good photograph taken of you with good lighting, and a good face that displays a bit of character.

The drawing itself was quite straight forward.  I don’t trace, so spent a while ensuring the eyes, nose and mouth were in roughly the right place, and just carried on from there.

I’m not against tracing, but I’d feel like a cheater if I did, and I don’t it that impressive when I see somebody else doing it.  So actually, maybe I am against tracing.

It is far more rewarding to start on a blank page, and scribble and smudge until the face appears, like you’re developing a photograph in a dark room.   Of course, the drawing probably won’t look exactly like it does from the photo, but that doesn’t really matter.  To me the only thing that matters is that it you like it.

So to finish, here is a poem from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, titled The Eagle –

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Actually, maybe I do like poetry…