Coluche: Conté crayon

My post today is a portrait of someone for whom I have a lot of admiration and who has made me laugh since I was ten years old: Coluche. If you read this post in English, you are maybe not as familiar with him: he is a French comedian who was very popular in the 70s-80s (more on Wikipedia). His unique sense of humour and his Restos du coeur (who feed hundreds of thousands of people in France every year) still inspire me today. I searched Google images for a good photo that would represent him as I remember him and I drew him (with brown Conté crayon) listening to him on my iPod. I added the original photo at the bottom of this post and you will see that my interpretation is quite different from the original and that my Coluche looks older and wiser than the real one. Ummm I wonder why! I like this drawing so much that I framed it and look at it every day although my wife still wonders who is this guy in the living room.

That was my first use of Conté crayon and it was quite tricky: it is very dry on the paper and creates a lot of dust that you don’t want to blow. Trust me, I tried only once! even if it smudges pretty well with a tortillon, I did not use this technique to keep the rough and coarse aspect that is more like him in my opinion (you will understand as soon as you listen to him if you have not yet).

Original photo – Google