Portraits for Pleasure - We Are Golden

I promised myself I would draw a picture inspired by the Mika song "We Are Golden" but struggled to conjure up any imagery. And I'm talking weeks here: figuring out how to interpret this song into a drawing took a mighty long time.

Just a few short days ago my house was filled with boredom, so I decided to stick on Mika's first concert DVD and also brought his second DVD into the living room so I could watch them both in order (Yeah, I really wasn't busy that day). I was flicking through the booklet that came with his second DVD and my eyes stopped at this picture.



I had always wanted to draw this picture but for some reason just never did. Now I had a reason to. "We Are Golden" is about giving yourself value and realising you have worth, and what I love about that picture is that Mika is wearing a golden mask, but on his head and not on his face. To me, it says that he doesn't really need to wear a mask to prove how golden he is, because that's what he really is.

So I started drawing! This is the first draft, and the mouth is completely dodgy lol.



I really like this next picture because of the intense shading. Of course there was still a lot more work to do, but it was also my first time using pencils of different thickness and it was turning out rather well.



It was at this stage where the picture began to look more like Mika! More detail plus the afro-fied hair which um...wasn't entirely meant to happen. Sorry Meeks.



I shouldn't brag, but I love the mouth detail. However, there's something about this picture that doesn't quite seem...Mika like. It just doesn't entirely look like him and I can't understand why. Sort of hated doing the shirt.



Starting to see a pattern yet? Greyscale face with a splash of colour. Looks more like Mika in this picture I think. I used charcoal for the hair. Still afro-fied though.



Okay, so the mask isn't great. What was difficult about the mask was that I had a gold colouring pencil, but it was light and wouldn't stand out well enough against the dark hair, and I had a gold permanent marker pen but was too bold, so I decided to mash them together to create light and shade. It could have gone a lot better if I had the right stuff. Oh well, it's done now. I also put gold glitter eyeliner over the top to add sparkle (No really, I did.)



By the time I got to this part I was really tired (it was late at night and I was doing this for 5-6 hours straight) and I couldn't bring myself to do the mask by his face. So, like a lazy person, I disguised it and wrote the word "Golden" inside it. So far this is the final piece. The shading doesn't look so intense next to all the colours and the charcoal, so I may have to work on that more when I have inspiration/when I can be bothered. But here it is so far and I'm quite proud of it.

Behold MIKA - The Golden Boy!