A BLAST FROM THE PAST

A few weeks ago I was tidying in the studio and changing things around.  Which means that now I can't find anything, of course.

I came across a battered old sketchbook from about 40 years ago that I bought to take with me on the first of my business trips to Nigeria.  

I had bought a small, cheap A5 sketchbook (with cheap nasty paper as it turned out) to help keep the weight of luggage down for the plane trip.  It provided a good excuse to stop moving things around and look through it for the memories.

This was a very quick sketch of a beautiful girl I met on the trip, and her name was Itohan.  I remember she was very pleased with the likeness and wanted to have the picture, but I was rather mean because I wanted to keep it myself.  

Over the decades the paper has faded and deteriorated, and  all the pages are loose, which serves me right for skimping on the sketchbook.

Every page brought back memories, and this particular sketch inspired me to do a painting in my journal.

I wanted to keep the image very simple, which was not too easily accomplished with the hair.  The lovely shapes of the hair-do are lost on the scanned image, though they stand out better on the original, but I just couldn't manage to make them any clearer here.

I tried to do a background that reminded me of the feel of the colours and buildings I had seen, without overwhelming the face and was quite pleased with the result.

Brought back many happy memories.