The first drawings reproduced in the book Don Bachardy, One Hundred Drawings (Twelvetrees Press, 1983), include two in 1961 of E. M. Forster and William Inge, two in 1962 of Aldous Huxley and David O. Selznick, and three in 1963 of Igor Stravinsky, W. H. Auden, and Marlene Dietrich. Bachardy, born in 1934, was twenty-seven in 1961, the year he drew Forster and Inge, and had his first one-man exhibition at The Redfern Gallery in London. His subjects were close friends from his and Christopher Isherwood's life together, of course. But imagine being twenty seven, beginning your professional career as an artist, and confronting these men and blank sheets of paper. Surely one grows up quickly in such moments. Above the signature at the bottom of Don's drawing, Stravinsky penned three musical notations, plus "Don, Don, Don/very well don," followed by three more notations.

One facet of Don's career would be to continue drawing the famous that passed in and out of his and Chris's life. Listing a few subjects from 100 Drawings illustrates their celebrity: Montgomery Cliff, Rita Hayworth, Fred Astaire, Tennessee Williams, Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier, George Cukor, etc. Add to these his constant work with Isherwood himself.

Don told me several times that when he was in his pre-teens and living with his brother and parents in Hollywood where he was born, his mother would take him and his brother Ted to the movies. Often she would not tell his father who disapproved of their going so frequently. But Don, Ted, and his mother loved films. So did I, and my experiences going to those plush 1940 theaters and sitting in the heavily decorated air-conditioned auditoriums left indelible impressions of beautiful faces on huge screens. The entire theaters complimented those faces that were filmed to be dramatic and arresting.

That Don would, not so many years later, draw the very stars he had watched as well as writers, directors, and producers who created them, is a touch of real irony. His total involvement would lead to his having the opportunity later in life to examine their faces in the flesh, drawing and painting them in their prime and their maturity. Don is quoted about this experience in a recent interview in the Los Angeles Times:

I've repeatedly had the experience of having sittings with the people whom I'd been so impressed by in movies. It was fascinating. And, of course, it was very difficult. Because it was maybe 20, 25, 30 years later. So the people I'd loved as a child were already in middle age--or older. For instance, a portrait of Fred Astaire at 70 was difficult--because he didn't look like Fred Astaire of the '30's and I couldn't pretend that he did. I had to draw him as I saw him. And he was helpless too, because he couldn't help expecting to see the Fred Astaire image instead of a 70-year-old man.

That's tough. I often feel badly that I'm hurting the very people I adored, by being frank about how they look. But there's no way around it. I can't invent anything. Working from life means a devotion to what I see in life. I can't fake it.

You see, Fred Astaire, when you think of him, you think of him with a big grin. Well, you can't sit for an artist for an hour and grin at him. Some people have tried it--Ginger Rogers tried it. Of course, as soon as you force any kind of smile, it's not a smile anymore. But she did smile for me--hour after hour after hour. I drew what I saw. But you look at the pictures, and you see it's not really a smile, it's almost a grimace of pain. And when you think of holding a smile for an hour or more, it is painful! That came out in the picture. So that upset her."

Part of his career is a record of what so many important artists in our culture looked like--and how Don interpreted what he saw. His forthcoming book from the University of Wisconsin press, Stars in My Eyes, displays drawings of these stars.

His major work in drawing is the series done of Isherwood during the months leading to and the hours after his death. Bachardy drew Isherwood daily, doing as many as nine or ten on certain days. He worked "either on a drawing bench or at an easel, using whatever light was available, either day or night...."

Of the book chronicling some of these drawings, Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood (Faber and Faber, 1990), John Russell states, "There was never a book like this before, and I doubt that there will ever be one like it again. The first time round, readers may well dread to turn the next page, for what we see here--often at very close quarters--is a fellow human being in torment...Its subject is unusual--the current of loving kindness and moral kindness that can flow between one person and another in terrible times."

Los Angeles Times critic William Wilson (Wednesday, October 2, 1991, LA Times) writes of these drawings: "Some are as sympathetically elegant as Gainsborough, others as forthright as Kokoscha. Others resemble nothing so much as the ink drawings of eccentric Zen monka who took decades to develop the capacity to render a subject's inner spirit...Styles have fused before. Rarely, if ever, have artist and subject blended so completely. Here, identification is so close that the drawings seem to virtually disappear, leaving a quality of pure empathy hovering above the surface of the paper."

The drawings begin with Isherwood in his many moments, pensive, dreamy, direct, glum, grim, then in worsening pain. The final drawings, done after Isherwood's death, one can hardly look at, whether or not they knew Isherwood.

I visited Isherwood and Bachardy several times during this period. Each visit--and each phone call until we no longer spoke on the phone--Isherwood would tell me how he was blessed to know Don and to have him with him. I've often thought that Don's drawing Chris was part of Chris's happiness then.Bachardy starkly writes of finishing this series:

Later I started drawing Chris's corpse at two o'clock and worked more or less steadily until Elsie came at around nine.

I have had my death encounter with Chris. I have had that body all to myself all afternoon. I'm glad Elsie didn't notice the eleven drawings I'd placed on the table in the darkened dining room, hoping she would not notice them. I was afraid she would think me ghoulish. I feel sort of ghoulish, but also like an artist, and like a pioneer in the further reaches of the land of feeling.

I was deeply shocked by Chris's remains--their utter lack of connection with him, in spite of the nose, the eyebrows, the ears--but forced myself to go on and on, looking into those dead empty eyes where once such light had flashed. When drawing faces I am skilful enough at instilling a quality of life in them that I had to remind myself not to bring life to the drawings, but fear even so a few of them look as alive, almost, as last night's drawings. (I did six of them last night, from six-thirty to nine-thirty.) But already by last night he was on his way--those unblinking eyes half turned up under the lids.

Bachardy's drawing are not predominantly of celebrities, however--it's just that these, being better known than other subjects, receive most of the attention. He draws and paints everyone he can from the life around him. He is currently painting a series ofnudes. I've been a subject of Don's many times and want to describe the experience of sitting. To begin with, I'm gregarious and move around a lot even when I'm alone. Sitting still for hours--up to my record eight hours for him--is not easy. The entire time, Don is examining me. He often chews on a paint brush and has a fierce expression. I think that almost anyone would be rather afraid to move unnecessarily. Sitting is important business, and I'm supposed to be motionless yet natural.

I try, of course, without his noticing, to catch a glimpse of anything he's painting. Short of seeing something, I guess at what he's painting--my nose? My lips? I look directly into his eyes and when he looks, there's a quick connection. He glances down, paints, and looks back up. Again, there's the connection. All this is part of the creative process. Not a moment is lost. Afterward, of course, seeing the painting, I am delighted to have had the opportunity to sit. I realize all Don's attention, his accuracy and interpretation, is concern. We're used to being ignored by most people.

Here's how the novelist Carolyn See describes the experience in an article for the Los Angeles Times Magazine:

How does one know that one is supposed to sit still, still, still, and look into Bachardy's eyes? One knows, that's all. Why waste this man's time? Everything, the air here, speaks of work getting done.

So you look out at the ocean. The fog is rising. The dew evaporating. The air thickens and sparkles. Your feet go immediately to sleep. You made a terrible mistake arranging your left hand the way you did. Your neck stiffens. The blood leaves your head. You notice yourself breathing and try to breath shallowly, or wait until he looks at your skirt to breathe. All your skin itches. Bachardy looks over his bifocals at you and dips his fine brush in ink--actually, this first sitting is for a black-and-white drawing--addresses it to the pad, fixes you with his eyes again...The edges to everything in the room, and the glowing, sun-drenched world outside, begin to blur and glitter. The morning's happening behind Bachardy! Still, you're locked into his eyes, and vice versa....

In October, a collaboration between Don and Chris, Chris writes of sitting for Don, first for two drawings, then for a third:

So the first two drawings were unsatisfactory. Discouraged, we decided on another sitting in the evening. This time, I sipped rum and was inspired to try an experiment. Don often describes his work as a confrontation. He himself, with a pen gripped in his mouth ready for use when it is needed instead of a brush, reminds me of a pirate carrying a dagger between his teeth while boarding the enemy. He seems to be attacking the sitter. So now I counter-attacked. Summoning up all my latent hostility, I glared at him unwavering, with accusing eyes. While he was working, he didn't seem to be noticing this. Yet he recorded it. The finished drawing is scary; my old face is horrible with ill will. Most satisfactory.

From 1953 on, taking Isherwood's advice, Bachardy kept a journal. Isherwood, too, kept one, of course, the first volume recently published as Christopher Isherwood Diaries, Volume I, 1939-1960 (Harper Collins). Isherwood's journal was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review and the Times Literary Supplement. He drew from these journals for his novels and non-fiction books, and was well known for keeping them.

Don did not show Chris more than short passages of his from time to time, and showed less to anyone else. Yet he has painstakingly put in entries every few days for all these years. During the last few years, several excerpts have been published. I've had the opportunity to read many years of Don's journals. To begin with, as you can see in the excerpts we've published, they're clear. They are not bothered with pretensions. They focus, as his art does, on details that interpret a fuller picture. I often think of several of the entries I've read--they've stayed with me.

The entries are not meant to be flattering portraits; rather, they honestly give Don's perception, and just as he's examining while he paints, he's examining when he isn't. He has a brutal ability to see and to state exactly what might most horrify the other person because there is truth in it. Perhaps he's giving only one vantage point. It doesn't matter because of the reality that is achieved. After all, it's his realistic viewpoint. When Don's journals are published--and it will be years because of the people written about--I predict he'll become known as an artist and a writer.

His journal also is interesting for having been written at the same time and about the same material as Isherwood's. But their careers, as their lives, were intertwined. They also collaborated on several projects, including the 1979 dramatization of A Meeting by the River. Isherwood once told me that people would be surprised how important part of the collaboration Don was. His ideas helped shape and reshape what they wrote together.