Move forward

The generational quality of this grief comes from the fact that, as the celebrities with whom we grew up die, it signals that we are at the age where people are dying, and we look ahead to the inevitable disasters, the wave that grows larger on the horizon. If our public grief is a performance, it’s a performance in the way that a disaster drill is a performance. 

Our grief at losing an icon who meant a great deal to us is a real grief but a bearable one. But that bearable grief is a test-drive for future unbearable ones. We practice together in the hope that we can be prepared, so that the idea of loss does not seem so alien. 

Complaints about the inappropriate nature of grief on social media – that it’s a circle-jerk, a joiner’s club, an obligated performance – are as defining a part of these mournings as the remembrances themselves. But to call this grief a performance is to miss the point – it’s not a performance, it’s a rehearsal. It seems right to me that grief be public, and messy, and inconvenient, that it make everyone in its path uncomfortable. 

Small amounts of discomfort, after all, increase our tolerance for large amounts of pain. Mourning celebrities who mattered to us is a way to remind ourselves that no one is spared, not even those who seemed immortal, larger than a human being with petty little organs doing their pedestrian little jobs inside their skin. Speaking things aloud removes their terror, dulls the power of their unfamiliarity. We speak this over and over to try to come to terms with something that cannot possibly be made familiar.

USEFUL MATERIALS

sketchbook

pencil set

waterproof fineliners

white pen

watercolours

acrylics

pastels

inks

copic markers

brushes

travel brushes

gouache

oil paints

craft knife

TUTORIALS

lighting a face

add variety to faces

skin colours 

curly hair tutorial

clothes folds

draped fabric

shoes

add a glow

furnish a room 

skylines

trees watercolour

ARTIST INSPO

Breugel 

Vanitas

Rembrandt

Claude Monet

Camille Pisarro

Odilon Redon

Picasso

Van Gogh

Surrealism

Matisse

Chagall

Arthur Rackham

Andy Warhol

Tove Jansson

Peter Doig

Cornelia Parker

Grayson Perry

Damien Hirst

Tracy Emin

REFERENCE

pose creator

more pose references

sketchbook inspo

book of sketchbooks

le-dessin

Collins artist manual

Artsy

TATE youtube

National Portrait Gallery instagram

Royal Academy instagram

The art assignment

Unseen photos from 1974