Young "Beast", Old "Beast"

I'm always in search of interesting people to draw, so I thought I'd give a try or two to the sketching of Aleister Crowley, aka 'the Beast'. Such a conflicted, contradictory fellow! Capable of brilliant insights combined with utterly clueless disasters, his visage was indeed fascinating to study for a brief while. I chose the younger Crowley first:


from a photo at Wikipedia
thirteen minutes spent on this piece, and yes, the shadowing looks like a snarl ball of yarn...


Face detail...

There he is, when his life was before him, all of potential. I found interesting the contrast of him as an older man:


12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947
from a photo at About.com
ten minutes spent on this piece...

He does indeed look "perplexed by a mystery he could not identify"(BoCfbN). Maybe it was that 'getting lost in Nuit thing'. One loses all capacity for critical judgment when one does that. And too much absinthe and peyote and heroin and so forth doesn't help, either.

Anyway, he's a intriguing man, well worthy for the artist's pen. Perhaps I shall give his features a more lengthy try in the future.

In addition to other websources on him, Xeper.org features a commentary on his book. Look for the pdf on 'Temple of Set' and search....