Happy Birthday to Me! :-D
I find the hobbit habit of giving mathoms on their birthday a very likable one. So, this year I will stick to this tradition.
I honour of my birthday (:-D) I have made a new drawing And since I am blatantly on a Johnny Depp trip, my subject was his Deppness himself again, this time in the part of Scottish author and playwright J.M. Barrie (1860-1937), the father of Peter Pan, a role he played in the film Finding Neverland from 2004.
It was a nice contrast to my Sweeney drawing (you missed that one? You find it here: http://whiteling.livejournal.com/22890.html#cutid)
Soft graphite pencil on Japanese paper, 30 x 45 cm
Before I watched Finding Neverland, I was not very familiar with the work of J.M.Barrie; I had heard of Peter Pan, but could not claim to know the story very well. I liked the remark of one film critic: "Finding Neverland is the story about something very beautiful born from something very sad". The origin of the poetic tale of the boy who wouldn't grow up is a tragic one:
When he was 6 years old, his next-older brother David Barrie, his mother's favourite, died two days before his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing his clothes. One time Barrie entered her room, and heard her say "Is that you?" "I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to," wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy (1896), "and I said in a little lonely voice, 'No, it's no' him, it's just me.'" Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her. (Wikipedia.org)
Barrie was inspired to his immortal story by his acquaintance with the family Arther and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. He was not only good friend with the parents, but with their sons George, John, Peter, Michael and Nicholas, who became role-models for Barrie's literary characters. The film is only loosely based on the historical events and takes some liberties in displaying things. For example, when movieBarrie gets to know the Llewelyn Davieses in Kensington Gardens, Sylvia is already widowed. Actually, Arthur L.D. died only in 1907, 10 years after Barrie met the family for the first time. Usually, I prefer it when films try to stick close to historical facts, but I didn't mind the liberties Finding Neverland took, as the whole film is a masterpiece of a soulful and poetic fantasy over Barrie and his creation, not a documentation. They would not have cast Johnny Depp as Barrie had it had to be accurately done - J.M. Barrie was a little and not very handsome man. Johnny Depp is very much suitable to play him though, since he gives Barrie's beautiful soul and mind an equally beautiful envelope.
In case you want to know more about the Scottish writer, you may visit http://www.jmbarrie.co.uk/, a great website dedicated to Peter Pan's "father".
During drawing this radiant face, I kept thinking: "The same guy played Sweeney Todd. How does he do it?!"
Yep, it's the same person:
A second ST drawing I made some time ago
It's stunning, isn't it?
I honour of my birthday (:-D) I have made a new drawing And since I am blatantly on a Johnny Depp trip, my subject was his Deppness himself again, this time in the part of Scottish author and playwright J.M. Barrie (1860-1937), the father of Peter Pan, a role he played in the film Finding Neverland from 2004.
It was a nice contrast to my Sweeney drawing (you missed that one? You find it here: http://whiteling.livejournal.com/22890.html#cutid)
Soft graphite pencil on Japanese paper, 30 x 45 cm
Before I watched Finding Neverland, I was not very familiar with the work of J.M.Barrie; I had heard of Peter Pan, but could not claim to know the story very well. I liked the remark of one film critic: "Finding Neverland is the story about something very beautiful born from something very sad". The origin of the poetic tale of the boy who wouldn't grow up is a tragic one:
When he was 6 years old, his next-older brother David Barrie, his mother's favourite, died two days before his 14th birthday in an ice-skating accident. This left his mother devastated, and Barrie tried to fill David's place in his mother's attentions, even wearing his clothes. One time Barrie entered her room, and heard her say "Is that you?" "I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to," wrote Barrie in his biographical account of his mother, Margaret Ogilvy (1896), "and I said in a little lonely voice, 'No, it's no' him, it's just me.'" Barrie's mother found comfort in the fact that her dead son would remain a boy forever, never to grow up and leave her. (Wikipedia.org)
Barrie was inspired to his immortal story by his acquaintance with the family Arther and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. He was not only good friend with the parents, but with their sons George, John, Peter, Michael and Nicholas, who became role-models for Barrie's literary characters. The film is only loosely based on the historical events and takes some liberties in displaying things. For example, when movieBarrie gets to know the Llewelyn Davieses in Kensington Gardens, Sylvia is already widowed. Actually, Arthur L.D. died only in 1907, 10 years after Barrie met the family for the first time. Usually, I prefer it when films try to stick close to historical facts, but I didn't mind the liberties Finding Neverland took, as the whole film is a masterpiece of a soulful and poetic fantasy over Barrie and his creation, not a documentation. They would not have cast Johnny Depp as Barrie had it had to be accurately done - J.M. Barrie was a little and not very handsome man. Johnny Depp is very much suitable to play him though, since he gives Barrie's beautiful soul and mind an equally beautiful envelope.
In case you want to know more about the Scottish writer, you may visit http://www.jmbarrie.co.uk/, a great website dedicated to Peter Pan's "father".
During drawing this radiant face, I kept thinking: "The same guy played Sweeney Todd. How does he do it?!"
Yep, it's the same person:
A second ST drawing I made some time ago
It's stunning, isn't it?