Drawing: Ed Sheeran

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

ed sheeran

My daughter Andrea is a huge Ed Sheeran fan. She said to me that a signed drawing would be very cool. She lives in New Zealand and got to go to his gig there. I live in London, so she figured I might have a better chance to fulfil her request. Now I have to confess, I’m not an Ed disciple, but I did this very quick profile sketch one day last year because there was a chance to get it signed at an event in London. That passed without success.

Ed’s early career was spent sleeping on friends’ sofas and dreaming of playing the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. He is now one of the most streamed singers on the internet and selling out Wembley Stadium for three nights during his X Tour earlier this year. His debut concert film, Jumpers for Goalposts has just been released, documenting his meteoric rise to fame. The World Premiere was held last night at London’s Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square, with Ed attending and playing. This presented me with my second chance and this time lucky. He was great with all the fans… and me, doing the whole line, mostly posing for selfies and the occasional sig which he scribed on the sketch. While waiting, I listened to his music and I have to say it wasn’t half bad. My daughter has taste and now a signed drawing, Royal Mail willing.

Drawing: Alessandra Ferri, Prima Ballerina Assoluta

Posted on October 22, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

alessandra ferri

Italian dancer Alessandra Ferri is a prima ballerina assoluta.To share my expanding knowledge on dance, that is a title awarded to the most notable female dancers. It is a rare honour, reserved only for the most exceptional artists of their generation. The ‘hauntingly beautiful’ Alessandra began her climb to the pinnacle of ballet when she joined The Royal Ballet at the age of 15. Four years later she became one of its youngest Principal dancers. A small staue of her as Juliet stands in the Royal ballet school in her honour. After a six-year sabbatical, she returned, at the age of 52, to her Covent Garden roots to perform a ‘mesmerising comeback’ in Wayne Mc Gregor’s Woolf Works. Only a handful of ballerinas have danced in their 50’s. The Royal Ballet said Alessandra is the oldest to take a leading role, “en pointe and of this physicality” since the legendary Margot Fonteyn, who danced until she was sixty. Early this month the double Olivier Award winner joined one of the stars of American ballet, Argentine Herman Cornego in Martha Clarke’s adaption of Colette’s obsessive love story Cheri in the Royal Opera’s Linbury Studio. The Observer’s dance critic Luke Jennings was full of admiration, concluding his review with ‘Cheri is about the cruelty of time; Ferri’s career tells another, happier story,”

This is one of two sketches I drew-the other was Alessandra and Herman rehearsing Cheri.They signed for me after the final performance.

Drawing: Cate Blanchett in Big and Small

Posted on October 21, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Cate Blanchett

Listed amongst one of Cate Blanchett’s trivia pages is ‘Enjoys making lists and crossing items off as she accomplishes them.’ This sketch has been on my list to get signed by the two-time Academy award winner since she performed Big and Little (Gross ind Klein) at the Barbican in April 2012. It probably wasn’t on Cates. When it was first staged in London in 1983, Botho Strauss’s surreal play was meet with boos and walkouts. Critics called the three hour long play a ‘punishing’ piece of avant-garde theatre. This new English adaption by Martin Crimp had a much better reception this time round. The Guardian’s Michael Billington wrote, “one of the most dazzling, uninhibited performances I’ve ever seen, suggests a garrulous angel who doesn’t quite belong to earth.”

Anyway back to lists. As mentioned, since the spring of 2012 I have tried to get this drawing signed. In fact this is part of a trilogy-a concept familiar to Cate and her role in certain Peter Jackson Middle Earth blockbusters. I drew 3 sketches based on Big and Small. One I left at the theatre and two I kept in case our paths should cross. The theatre triplet has not reappeared. I’m not sure why I had drawn two others and the reason has never bothered to clarify itself. Opportunities have presented themselves over the past three years, but that’s all they’ve done. This year Cate was to be presented with the BFI Fellowship at the London Film Festival. Plus,she was attending two screenings. A trilogy of chances to get a sketch signed. First one came and went. The second, at the Truth prem worked. I didn’t ask if it was on her list, but I can now cross it off mine.

Drawing: Michael Fassbender

Posted on October 19, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

michael fassbender

“I’m poorly made,” says Michael Fassbender in his title role as the mercurial tech giant Steve Jobs in Danny Boyle’s latest atypical biopic of the Apple co-founder. The film, simply titled Steve Jobs closed this year’s BFI London Film Festival with Michael attending. can perfect world-altering products yet clearly struggles with people, hence the reference and pivotal piece of dialogue. The film on the other hand is not poorly made, opening to critically-acclaim and talk of awards. It’s early in the season, but Micheal appears to be the frontrunner to collect the giant share of gongs, including the covered Oscar. And the Irish-German actor himself is clearly not poorly made as evidenced by the number of swooning women from all nationalities packed into the pen with me at the premiere at the Odeon in Leicester Square. Three young Italian students …no, three young EXUBERANT Italian students, obviously perm-virgins in particular, hell-bent on getting a selfie with the star, that were proving a potential pitfall in my plans to get Michael’s sig on my sketch. But every crowd has a silver lining, because he wasn’t going to miss them, they were not the ignoring type. It was just a matter of positioning and patience…. oh, yes, and crucially, the placing my drawing in the hands of a fellow, male grapher in the front row. Michael is pretty laid back and very accommodating at these events. This situation was made for such demeanour. In the whirlwind that followed, we all achieved our goals. The young, now over exuberant Italian students squealed with delight, spouting pause-deprived sentences, occasionally punctuated with the word ‘Fassbender’, followed by even higher-pitched shrieks as they worked frantically on their mobiles’ contact lists to send the images to a global audience, while I can quietly head home and post this for you guys.

Sketch: Rafael Nadal

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Rafa Nadal

Just watching a bit of Saturday morning sport. Tennis to be precise. Rafa’s playing Jo-Wilfrend Tsonga in the Shanghai Masters semi final. It continues the popular Spaniard’s resurgence after an indifferent year, returning from injury.

Rafa’s a great player and a great signer. I’ve never seen him refuse an autograph. I’ve already posted a couple of signed Rafa renderings and here’s another one – this more of a montage.

Currently ranked world number seven, he looks likely to return to the O2 in London next month for the World Tour Finals which includes the top eight players. Here’s hoping. It’s such a grew place to get a graph, and I’m expecting him be part of my tennis harvest again this year.

Drawing: Rachel Weisz

Posted on October 16, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

rachel weisz

It’s Weisz as in ‘vice’, which sums up my hobby of collecting signed sketches in a nutshell. It’s the correct way to say Rachel’s surname and if it’s with an hungarian accent even more correct. The quinessential ‘English Rose’, as she is often described and the 127th actress to receive the Academy Award ( to show off my trivia knowledge) was busy this week with two Gala screenings at the BFI London Film Festival, for The Lobster and Youth.This doubled my chances of getting my drawing signed. Rachel has signed a drawing I did of her in her Olivier Award-winning role as Blanche Dubois in the Donmar Warehouse production of A streetcar Named Desire a few years ago. That graph was a ‘full’ one with every letter recognisable because she did it sitting quietly in her dressing-room. In the heat of battle at a Premiere the sig become more streamlined with more flow than definition due to the demand and time constraint. Getting a dedication is a bonus. But all went swimmingly as the English say. I managed to get it signed at the first outing with an inscription and a heart…or maybe that’s an ice cream cone. Either way she was happy and I was happy.

Drawing: Rooney Mara

Posted on October 15, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Rooney Mara

Fresh from winning the Best Actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her role as Therese Belivet a young, aspiring photographer who falls for an older, married woman in Carol, Rooney Mara walked the red carpet at the Gala Screening of the film at the BFI London Film Festival last night. The film received a ‘standing O’ at Cannes and is tipped for more honours.

The umbrella is a mandatory accessory at the London Festival, making regular appearances on the red carpet during the 12 days. This year it has been a notable absentee…until last night. Passing showers threatened to put the kibosh on collecting graphs as the mandatory accessories were in full use, resembling a Mary Poppins Convention. But Rooney’s timed her arrival nicely between the precipitation and I happened to be positioned in the right place as she got out of the car and signed for me with a nice little dedication.

Drawing: Nicola Benedetti

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

nicola b

Nicola Benedetti – such a great Scottish name, courtesy of her Italian father (who married her Scottish mother) – was born in West Kilbride in Scotland. The 28 year old is one of the world’s most sought after names when it comes to classical violinists. And she has a most sought after name I wanted on my sketch.

The Times once described her, “it was thrilling to hear and watch Nicola Benedetti in a truly risk taking performance that lived so much in the body and fused the sinews of the violin and the nerve system of the player”. Stirring stuff!

After a few years of waiting at various concert halls around London, but missing Nicky (see I’m now on informal first name abbreviations) every time, I finally went to the Royal Albert Hall where Nicola was playing a one-off performance last month and waited for her arrival. Nothing so I left it with a very obliging gentleman at the stage door who said he would get it to her.

A couple of weeks passed – a lifetime in autograph collecting terms – nothing! Then yesterday, bingo! It arrived!

Drawing: Saoirse Ronan

Posted on October 13, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Saoirse Ronan It’s hard enough to spell ‘Saoirse’ let alone pronounce it. Even as I type it, a red line appears underneath, so even spell-check has concerns. The few drops of Gaelic in my blood composition isn’t enough to enable me to roll it off the tongue. It would be more rogue than brogue. I’m not alone. In fact there’s a YouTube video devoted to correctly pronouncing her name and many an interviewer broaches the subject as a rule rather than the exception. Saoirse herself says it’s pronounced ‘Sersha’ like ‘inertia’, although she said some Irish say ‘Searsha’. Either way it means ‘freedom’. The 21 year-old was born in the Bronx in New York City to Irish parents, but grew up in Ireland’s County Carlow, spending a great deal of it on film sets with her father, so her career path seemed inevitable. She came to prominance as the eccentric 13 year-old aspiring novelist Briony Tallis in Joe Wright’s Atonement in 2007, earning BAFTA, Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.

On Sunday she was presenting a screen talk as part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival, before attending the premiere of her latest film Brooklyn the next day. A civilised crowd of us lined up to greet her at the back of the BFI on London’s South Bank, discussing how to pronounce her name when she arrives. ‘Ms Ronan’ seemed proper and easier, not that she needed reminding of her name and why we were gathered. But that didn’t stop the more vocal collectors calling out a number of verbal variations. She got the picture and it didn’t really matter how to say or spell it because she doesn’t seem bothered and doesn’t include it as part of her sig anyway.

Drawing: Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet

Posted on October 12, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the fanatically awaited season of Hamlet with Benedict Cumberbatch playing the great Dane sold out. Well not quite..more likely the amount of time it took for me to two-finger type it. The sale of the 100,000 tickets for the 12-week run at London’s Barbican Theatre was the fastest in British theatrical history.Hysteria and madness surrounded the production, with fans travelling from the four corners to get a glimpse of the the man or if they were lucky, to actually see him on stage. Many camp out overnight to grab the 100 tickets that are held back each day for £10, and are twelve deep to catch him when he sometimes comes out after the show, after initially saying he wasn’t going to do so. Needless-to-say this was not conjusive to collecting his graph on my sketch. I have battled hysteria before and it’s not pretty.Theatre staff were instructed not to accept anything at the stage door for him, so that scuttled that plan.I decided to take a more saner route and get a wristband for the BFI London Film Festival’s Gala Screening of Black Mass at the Odeon in Leicester Square yesterday. Both Benedict and Johnny Depp were scheduled to appear and they duly did. I even managed to get a good posse near the drop-off. So far so good. you may have noticed that ‘Benedict Cumbebatch’ is quite a lengthy moniker and he signs in full, which takes time. No ‘BC’ for Sherlock, although he did have a brief spell initializing his sig for Star Trek stuff. Therefore, and rightly so, it’s only one item per person. Here’s my dilemma. For four years I have carried around an A4 sized Tinker Tailor Solder Spy poster which had been signed by all the cast members, except Benedict. Try as I did through rain, hail and shine, I never managed to get it graphed. Do I try to get it signed this time or do I go with the drawing? I decided to go with the sketch, and it proved an excellent choice, because he was very pleased with the rendering and took time to, not only dedicate it, but write a nice message. I took the opportunity to ask, apologetically, if he wouldn’t mind also signing the poster, which he kindly did. Here’s the sketch. The poster and it’s tale is for another day.