from the pencil of young pete - petescully

from the pencil of young pete

I drew this 19 years ago, when I was just thirteen. 19 years ago!! The Berlin Wall was still up! Nelson Mandela was still in prison! George Bush was the new President of the USA!
I was digging through my old drawings from when I was a kid recently and thought I should share them with you. I remember drawing this (I still use the 'mechanical' eraser I used in this very drawing, there's continuity for you!); I was a huge Beatles fan, and trawled the record stores and junk shops of London for old original LPs (plus a load of old albums my uncle gave me). Note how I've given Macca his real first name too.
I did another version of it at 16 (below left), in 1992, with stronger values and less chin, but I prefer the first one for its innocence. I was doing my GCSE art in '92 and several of the other pictures below are from that time; below right is a watercolour copy of Cezanne that I did at 15 or 16, from a postcard picked up at the National Gallery - I used to go down to London most weekends to go to the galleries (and the record stores).

Ten years later I ended up living in Cezanne's town of Aix-en-Provence, which is where I met my wife (and therefore how I ended up living in the US). Funny old world.
Below is another from 16-year old Pete in 1992, an unfinished one of Jesus from some other painting I can't remember. An interesting choice for such an atheistic lad as I, but even though I'm A NonBeliever I know aestheticism sometimes trumps atheisim; years later I did a one-person art performance piece at university about being drunk on the underground, which ended up with me on a crucifix (supposed to be King's Cross).

The pencil one below left is a pastorly Peter Cushing (looking more like the Crow Man), also from 1992. I seemed to have an easier time with light and dark values back then than I do now. It's from one of my horror-movie books; I was really into old Hammer Horror films (I have another sketch of Christopher Lee too), and in 1992 I wrote and performed an eight-song musical called "Dracula AD 1992" (an homage to the 1972 Hammer movie), which included such classic songs as "This Motel's Giving Me The Willies" and "Freshly Impaled Village Maidens". Below right: a later picture, 1995, 19 years old and obsessed with oil pastels. Doesn't look massively like me, but you get the idea. I didn't wear glasses very often back then.

A little trip into young pete's world.

8.4.08 06:41

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Terry Banderas / Website (9.4.08 16:45)
Thanks for sharing these. I'm sure you are glad you saved them. I think all of us artists save most of the their work from years back. I do even if my art was crappy.

petescully / Website (12.4.08 04:39)
Cheers, i am glad i saved them. A lot of the things are clunky but some i'm quite proud of, and am not sure if i could do now. it makes me wish i had been drawing as much as when i was a mid-teenager and as much as I am now for all those years in between.