Shshsh! I know it's not perfect but - maybe almost! Besides, the young artist who is my Art Teacher already moved me to the next (and the more difficult) level; enlarging by mere approximation. Which means, you only have to look at the subject and draw it without any aid of a ruler or any tool for measurement. You are completely on your own!
The way the young artist who is my teacher had said to me who the guy was made me think that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't Brutus; he wasn't Brutus at all. When I looked at the guy in the picture, I began to wish he were a Roman General instead of a Senator. He seems to match the image of a military man. There was something about his patrician forehead or is that a patrician nose. Or the way he pursed his lips that hinted of a smile or cunning; his shrewd, calculating gaze, his thick neck, which suggested of a physique that could be achieved only through long years of training and discipline.
I stared at him for hours. Ja could not understand why I sat there for hours, staring. "What are you doing? Why can't you start your drawing yet? Why are you staring there for so long?" I began to understand why artists stare. Van Gogh spent days staring at the potato fields when he did the potato eaters. Or was it the potato peelers? (Yes, I came from the kitchen. I use peelers a lot!) Basta! Potatoes! Look it up in that book of his letters.
But I stared and stared almost to the core of the soul of Brutus (if this were really Brutus. I searched the images on the web and I only found a younger face, so, I'm still in doubt). I like the guy to be a Roman General but I also tried to think of him as a convicted criminal, a leader of an underground syndicate, a beggar, a pedophile. Just to see if the characters and the picture could match.
My drawing failed to capture the ruthlessness of the man. Nor his brute strength. In my drawing, he is not a Roman General at all. He does not even look like a Roman. I'm not making any judgment. I'm just blabbering.
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