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Once Upon a Time in China and America
I had bought this little book of
"Once upon a time in China and America" with lots of pictures, and
that photo struck me. We could really see his face very closely, and
since his face fascinates me so much... I decided to choose that one.
There are not so many good-quality photos of Jet where we can see
him closely, and i know that now i have to search directly in the
movies. But that's right because every time i see a movie, some very
precise pictures remain in my mind. I know exactly which picture I
NEED to draw one day. Which angles, and so on. I've already some ideas
for next drawings... So, i started to draw him. I always use charcoal
pencils mixed with classic pencils. It's very helpful to restitute
the texture. And what interests me is precisely the texture. It's
sensual... i need to feel the volumes, the softness of skin, ... portraits
are very special experiences, different from drawing comic characters,
for example. You have a particular "contact" with your model, different
from the one you have with a character you create. Both portraits
and comic characters are fantastic to do. During every drawing i make,
i'm listening to some music. And there's always a special song associated
to one special drawing... strangely i'm always listening to quiet
and serene musics while drawing Jet Li. For the last one, it was the
very beautiful beginning of a Smashing Pumpkins song, "Porcelina of
the vast oceans". This beginning was 2'12 long, but never mind, i
put it in repetition to keep this appropriate atmosphere. And this
drawing was only finished a long time after it was almost complete,
because I always saw something wrong in it. My sister Elodie and my
brother Antoine were of great help to make me realize some little
incoherences. We often need some external look since we are so implicated
: in the end, we can't see the existing defaults anymore. So others
or just time passing help a lot. I didn't look at it for a few weeks,
and after that i was able to finish it.
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Original Version
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Original Version
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Casual
I made this drawing
during the Summer 1998, when I had only been knowing this actor for
several months. So this can be considered as a first approach todraw
him. It's always better to knowvery well (artistically speaking, of
course) the person you are drawing, and I can't say that it was the
case here, but I tried to restitute what I had perceived at the time.
I chose this picture because I loved the contrasts of the photo, which
are always very stimulating to draw. I also liked the proud look on
his face, and I wanted to be faithful to this impression. I used several
kind of pencils to create the depth of the face and the complicated
levels of shadows. I rearranged it one last time for Jet Li's birthday,
and it took me some time, since I have the habit to draw faces longer
than they are in reality. It was quite a challenge because the paper
had already been damaged a little : I had been pressing a lot on it
with my dark pencils and erasing a lot too!
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