Coronation Street Portraits

Full disclosure: these portraits were too much fun to draw. I’ve always loved how Coronation Street characters are interesting-looking. They’re not perfect and made-up like American soap opera stars. The more interesting the look, the more fun it is to draw.

I’ve drawn what essentially amounts to Corrie fan-art. I’ve been watching the show since 2002, when I started watching because I didn’t have cable and the CBC was the only available channel through my tiny TV’s antenna (other shows acquired during that period: Emmerdale, the Red Green Show, This Hour has 22 Minutes, etc). I’ve been hooked on Corrie ever since then.

I’ve chosen to draw not my favourite characters, but the characters that have been listed as the ones who have been in the most episodes. William Roache (as Ken Barlow) has been on the show since the very first episode…back in 1960. Yes! Coronation Street is the longest running TV show still airing. We also have Anne Kirkbride (as Ken’s wife Deirdre Barlow, RIP), Helen Worth as Gail Platt and Barbara Knox as Rita Tanner.

I can see myself adding more to this collection, but for now here are the four:

 

 

Portraits, portraits

Drawing portraits is so great…especially ballerina portraits! Here is a bunch of new ones:

Spread for Avenue Magazine

I had the opportunity to work with AD Venessa Brewer on Avenue’s  holiday gift guide spread. It features my portraits as well as several line drawings that were incorporated with the product photos.

I had so much fun working on these drawings!

 

Brand new portfolio

There have been many changes business-wise in my life in the past 3 months. First of all, I decided to go on hiatus from Papillon Press, my letterpress stationery business after 6 years of doing it (read more about it on the PP blog). One of the main reasons for stepping back is that I realized I needed to fulfill my dream of becoming a published illustrator (or at least try to) and running the business full-time was preventing me from doing that (one only has to look at the sporadic entries on this blog for proof of that). Thus I’ve completely revamped my portfolio to reflect a variety of editorial illustrations.

www.chantalbennett.com

I haven’t had this much fun drawing in years and am looking forward to making drawing my full-time job.

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Lots more illustrations on my website.