Author: Christopher Devlin

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Movie Artwork
“Irish Hallowe’en Masks?”, 2018, charcoal pencils on toned grey paper, 7″ x 5″

Halloween III: Season of the Witch is the 2nd best Halloween movie and it’s not even close. It’s nonsensical and languorously paced and the acting is weird and I love it with a protective fierceness you should probably only reserve for family members or pets. I met Tom Atkins once. Absolute charmer.

Available.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Movie Artwork
“Materials. Nothing More.”, 2018, charcoal pencils on toned grey paper, 7″ x 5″

Despite this being a pretty terrible film, I have a lot of affection for both it, and this sketch, as it was the first episode of our podcast we ever recorded. Two overeager and audibly nervous dudes wittering on at excruciating length in to microphones a few hundred miles apart about a film most people have rightly forgotten. We may not have gotten better at it, but we’ve certainly gotten shorter, and that’ll certainly do for me! Kenneth Branagh’s egotistical shirtless goo-thrashing scene remains a total high point. De Niro’s thesping, while incongruous, is also pretty badass when he’s allowed off the leash to go full ham and cheese.

Available.

Boogie Nights

Movie Artwork
“It’s A Real Movie, Jack”, 2018, charcoal pencils and pastel pencils on toned grey paper, 7″ x 5″

You’re MOTORING! What’s your price for flight? I absolutely adore Paul Thomas Anderson’s monumental sophomore feature Boogie Nights, applying a sardonic and hyperactive Scorsese-meets-Altman panorama of kinetic camera work and needle drops atop magnetic turns by a phenomenal ensemble. Anchoring the whole thing admirably is one-time punchline and erstwhile Bandit Burt Reynolds, oozing charm and sleaze in a package of paternal exploitation. One of my absolute favourite genres is ‘band of misfits get together to make a thing’, and this film is one of the absolute best examples of this, while being so much more.

Available as a high quality A5 poster here. Original available, contact for details.

Valentina

Life drawing
“La Regina”, 2019, sanguine pencil on ivory toned paper, 20″ x 16″

Drawn from life at The Moon and Nude Clapham, March 2019.

This was the first time I’d ever spent so long on one drawing from life – around an hour or so, with some additional detail work added sporadically over the days that followed (very sporadically – I would often sit and stare at the page for 30 minutes or so before committing to a small pencil mark). Yet, the drawing itself came together remarkably quickly considering how slowly I usually move on these things! Our model Valentina gave us such a bold and strong pose, she struck me as being very regal (hence the title), although in life drawing sessions she’s always remarkably approachable and friendly.

Available framed.

Commission – Gali x Columbo = Galumbo

Drawings
“MARINE PAINT”, 2018, charcoal pencils on toned grey paper and digital editing, 7″ x 5″

My esteemed Rewind Movie Podcast co-host Gali introduced me to Columbo back in the halcyon days of the Northern Film School, where our absurd amount of free time meant that we could scour the Freeview schedules on a daily basis looking for episodes, until I mustered up the spare cash from my sporadic cleaning jobs to buy the enormous series DVD boxset on discount from HMV in Leeds. From there, we were unstoppable, obsessing over the show’s bizarre and impressive roster of luminaries from Steven Spielberg and Jonathan Demme to Martin Sheen and Patrick McGoohan, cataloguing Peter Falk’s bag of method acting tics, and resolving to memorise every single murderer and weapon of choice.

When he asked if I could make a portrait of him, I just had to finally cast him in the role of a lifetime.

Commissions available on request – email devlindoesdrawing@gmail.com

The Misfits

Movie Artwork
“How Does Anyone Just Live?”, 2021, charcoal pencils and compressed charcoal on toned grey paper, 8″ x 6″

I find The Misfits absolutely engrossing. An elegy for the dying days of the Hollywood Golden Age, featuring performers who haunt every frame as their real-life tragedies co-mingle with the overripe screenplay by legendary playwright and at-the-time husband of star Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller. The film documents the last, brilliant performance of the King of Hollywood himself, Clark Gable, who didn’t live long enough to see the final edit, and Marilyn Monroe herself, who only lived long enough to move on to one last unfinished project. Her vulnerability and willingness to strip back the layers of glamour to show the raw humanity beneath are enormously affecting. And their co-star Montgomery Clift, with his virtuosic phone booth monologue as he lays out his entire character’s emotional range in barely a few minutes of screen time, struggled enormously in the few years he had remaining afterwards. I don’t want to sound too ghoulish here – the film is a beautiful, messy and worthy without such morbid fascination. But with it, it’s a striking and unique relic of a strange, sad period.

Available as a high quality A4 poster here. Original available, contact for details.