No. 333: Stevie

"Stevie" by Tom Wills, May 2016, graphite

 

In 1977, everybody wanted -- or wanted to be -- Stevie Nicks.
That's when the Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" record came out, and Stevie was the center image.
Oh my. That silky hair, her Jello-y voice, her flowing robes, misty lyrics.
Tenth grade. Flaming adolescence. Good times.

All flow-y and Jello-y in 1977

I had wanted to finish this portrait by her 68th birthday, May 26, but I missed the deadline by four days. Unusual for a newspaperman, but she distracted me.
Sixty-freaking-EIGHT. Damn. And still going at it, still flowin' and Jell-in' and people still want, or want to be, Stevie Nicks.

Sigh.

She would have been 29 or so when "Rumours" hit. I was 15. And now I'm 54.
But this is how my mind conjures up Stevie, eternally locked in her youth. I'm sure many of her fans are the same way. That's when the spell was cast upon us.
I don't ever wanna grow up.

Taking particular care with the details.

During this drawing I kept a tight grip on my ... 9B Prismacolor Turquoise art pencil. And that's what makes this drawing somewhat different from my other pencil works. These are premier crayons d'artiste, and there are 12 grades of leads, from hardest and lightest to softest and darkest. The 9B got a serious workout with Stevie and ended up sharpened down to a nub.
So it is a graphite drawing rather than strictly pencil.

My poor nub.

Not unique to this drawing, but an approach I have used only one other time, is that this was drawn almost completely on the edge of the pencil leads, rather than the tip. This gives the image a rough, foggy quality up close but from a distance appears photo-sharp. It's an illusion that fools the eye.

Drawn using the side of the pencil lead.

So there we have it. Eternally young Stevie drawn by a guy whose mind is sometimes still in 10th grade.
Would we want to go back there, just once?

Start!

Other images of the work are below. This picture is SOLD.