3 UNFINISHED LEGENDS BY GG - 1970'S

Although I did loads of drawings at home when I was schoolboy age, I can't find any yet from that era in my stash. The earliest sketch I have found so far in my collection is the top one of Jimi Hendrix which I did in 1974, aged 16, and drew it in-between the idle months of leaving school and finding work later that year. I just used one pencil that I kept as sharp as a hypodermic needle, and spent many hours doing all the microscopic detail. As you can see, I never got around to finishing it off, with his guitar still waiting to be done. I think it was a case of, enough is enough, time to move onto the next one! The image is taken from the cover photo of an album I had - Jimi live at Isle Of Wight.

The other 2 sketches were done around 1978/79.

The middle one is dub poet & political activist, Linton Kwesi Johnson. Deciding not to splash out on an expensive airbrush, I resorted to a tried & tested school trick for this one - dipping an old toothbrush into some watery paint and spraying it on by flicking back the bristles. You can still see the warped paper from it having been wet. This image was taken from a black & white photo that was probably in the NME or Echoes, so I had to invent the colours. Once again though, I didn't complete it. I got as far as doing 2 layers, but never did the 3rd and final layer which would have been the shadows & highlights, so it is missing a bit of detail.

The last one is Peter Tosh, reggae singer & musician. It too was taken from a b&w picture that cropped up in a music paper. I used 3 coloured pencils for this one - blue, red and white. His head seems complete but it looks like I got a bit bored when it came to his smock!

Anyone interested in zooming in on the drawings, click onto the images to enlarge.