In doing a portrait of Russell Brand there is a certain quality about him that requires a little searching beyond the obvious. There's the frizzed up hair, peculiar outfits and the owl-stare eyes...but there's also the smirk of a possibly serious comedian always in the middle of a joke. I started out with a drawing inked with brush on rough paper to give a loose quality to the brush strokes and then overlayed some greyish digital colours, just building up the tones and texture. The drawing did most of the work, with lots of black in his hair and beard and after adding in a few props alluding to his debauchery, the portrait was complete.
