Justice William Brennan

William Brennan was one of the great liberals of the Warren Court. I was excited to do this drawing, in part, because it was the first time that I worked from a painting rather than a photograph. (Here is the source.) The result is mixed-- I am really pleased with his left half (right side of the drawing). His left eye came out just right. The right eye is another story. I kept adding more ink and the drawing got muddy on me and the paper started to break down.

That brings me to a couple of the difficulties of the Make-it-Plate medium. First, with markers there is no way to make a drawing get lighter. Even if you add a lighter color to an area you are working on, it is always more ink and thus darker that it had been. Second, the drawings are done on these circular pieces of paper that Make-it sends to you. The paper is not designed for fine art, and if you overwork a part of the drawing, the fibers of the paper start coming up, and if you are not careful you can end up with a hole.

I suspect that I could send Make-it scans of my drawings and have them print from the scans (they do print plates from photos), but I haven't tried to hook that up. I guess I am attached to the limitations of the process.

A couple last things about the drawing: the robe-- I spent hours trying to capture the subtle gradations in color that are so apparent in the painting, but it didn't quite work out for me; and the more than passing resemblance to George W. Bush-- I hesitate to point it out because once you see W it's difficult to see anyone else.