Detlef Jumpertz

I originally wanted the magician to be pointing upwards towards the boy climbing the rope - half way through the drawing I lost enthusiasm for this idea. So it's scrapped as I think it would look a bit too contrived, also to achieve that effect I would have to scale back the size of the magician perhaps throwing the rest of the persepective out. I think if I can pose the magician without any exaggerated arm movement, then just use the magician's placement in the foreground, looking at the audience, it might be more natural and we'd still have a linking visual sight line from the top of the magician's head to near the spotlighted area. Additionally, at some point in magic's history, it wasn't so much about the trick/illusion (as every magician was performing virtually the same tricks), but about the magician's stage presence and stage craft that differentiated the ordinary from the magnificent. Having a larger magician in the foreground will also provide a feeling of a "larger than life" persona, and that persona is greater than an individual illusion. As I still haven't decided what the face should look like, there is little option but to begin with magician's tuxedo.

Tuxedo

Given the background of this drawing is fairly dark, then we are going to have to really lay on the graphite to get the blacks of the tuxedo right. I began by doing some quick line work, where I thought the crease of the magician's trousers would be. The left hand side of the crease would rendered with 6B and 8B pencils, the other side of the crease with 8B and 9B pencils, to provide some darker contrast.

After laying the graphite on really thickly on the left hand side of the trouser crease, then going over it again and again, and blending with a torchon in between, I finally got the darkness I was looking for. In isolation, it did however look like I'd over-egged the cake - the darkness standing out too much for my liking. However, I didn't want to prejudge things too much by viewing what I had done in isolation. So rather than fiddling around to lighten it, I breathed deeply and focussed on filling in the right hand side of the crease. I had to judge the whole of the tuxedo's trousers against the background, not just one half of it. Again I followed the same procedure as above but using darker pencils. I had to really grind the graphite into the paper to get the effect and darkness I wanted. How hard you may ask? Very hard I respond, if I had been using medium weight paper I probably would've ground my way through to the other side. It's marvellous what a heavy weight paper can endure.

Thankfully, my instincts were correct and holistically things came together, and I'm happy with the darkness of the tuxedo against the background, and also the subtle shading to give the tuxedo shape and the necessary contour of the legs. All of that took about two hours.