Studies and sketches of faces with commentary. For a more comprehensive view of the overall variety of approaches but without commentary try the following YouTube video link:
Drawings of Faces by Filliere Parts A & B
No precious pre-planning of shape, size, proportion here; no preliminary gridding for eye, nose, and mouth placement. Quite simply, I saw another image of Trudeau in a newspaper, grabbed available paper and pen, and scorched the page with the image as I perceived it, somehow managing to incorporate other impressions gathered elsewhere of the character of Mr. Trudeau. Done at warp speed I feel it misses nothing essential about the way we remember the personality of the man.
James and I have known each other since we were 16-year old freshmen at Memorial University in NL in 1956. In the past decade he and I have worked together on three privately authored (his authorship), designed, stitched & assembled, limited edition book projects (my role—those latter aspects). One of the three, Lord Beaverbrook and the Kennedys, was chosen by University of New Brunswick for a formal public edition published in 2012. It honoured most of my original design concepts for cover and inside but chose a black and white format rather than colour. I keep it like a trophy on my favourite books shelf.
This year was the first time I’d attempted to draw him, and I’m so pleased and relieved to say that the portrayal came to the paper with the same readiness, sureness, and speed as with the Trudeau image, though 45 years separate them in production.
Peter Gzowski used to enjoy that remarkable social ease and generosity in Jim’s nature, and invited James to his CBC Morningside radio interview program on several occasions.
fillière 