I’ve been thinking about who to use as a subject for this one quite a lot. Originally I had in mind Charlie Parker but I sort of feel he might not give me as much flexibility for this topic as I would like.
After browsing my collection of books and movies I’ve decided to settle on the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune.
Kurosawa once said of Mifune that he could express in 3 ft of film what would take any other Japanese actor 10 ft of film to get across, which I think is a pretty good endorsement when it comes to selecting someone as reference for this challenge 
Mifune was quite prolific staring in over 160 films spanning 50 years. Of these my personal favorite is Rashomon which is also a solid choice for my favorite film of all time. I think the series of films he did with Kurosawa from Rashomon (1950) through to Sanjuro (1962) form the best of his work and so I’ll be looking to get my primary reference for age and appearence from here.
I’ve just been on a reference gathering spree and am reasonably pleased.
Next I think I’ll do a few sketches, before I move on to modelling.