Pencil Portrait of a Married Hamer Woman

Graphite pencil drawing of a married Hamer woman on A4 Daler Rowney Airbrush Bristol board.

Pencils: Mars Lumograph (5H, HB, 2B, 4B), Faber Castell 9000 (6B, 7B, 8B), W H Smith Woodless 9B, mechanical pencils 0.3mm/2B, 0.5mm/4B with Pentel with Ain Stein leads.
Blending: Blending stump from Royal Langnickel, Cotton buds and paper tissues.
Erasing: WH Smith kneadable eraser, Blu-Tack, Jakar battery eraser and Tombow Mono Zero Ultra-fine eraser.
Photo adjustment using GIMP: Removal of barrel distortion; Cropping to A4 ratio and removal of perspective distortion; Cropping unfinished edges of drawing; Adjustment of histogram.

I came across the photo that I used as reference for this drawing (marcelloscotti-bcn.blogspot.co… ) while I was making my drawing of a Hamer Girl.  I was immediately struck by her extreme beauty and wanted to draw it too.  I was able to identify the photographer, Marcello Scotti and he kindly gave his permission for a drawing, but I delayed making the drawing because I did not feel that I could tackle such hair again so soon!

This woman is a first wife, as indicated by the torque of leather bound with iron and with a phallic protrusion. Her husband also has more wives, indicated by the two iron rings below this.  These are fitted by a blacksmith who hammers each ring closed round her neck with a heavy hammer!  They are never removed.

The Hamer women take great care of their appearance and I strongly urge you to look at the reference photo as her beauty and the colours in the hair and on her skin make for a truly memorable photo. 

As I said in the description of my earlier drawing, Hamer society is rather brutal towards its women who are subjected to whipping from the men, resulting in heavily scarred backs.  These scars are apparently worn proudly as a demonstration of the love of their husband!  Here again is a link to further information on the tribal customs larskrutak.com/ethiopias-last-….  Be warned that you may find the first photo there, of women’s bloody and scarred backs, to be distressing.

Here are some of my other drawings of African subjects:      

This drawing has been submitted to the Traditional Portrait Challenge in the We-Paint-Portraits group