Jesse Woodson James

For my first painting using the NeoLucida XL, I picked out a photo of Jesse James. I thought it would be a gentle way to make myself familiar with this new tool if I could use it for a smeller portrait at a jaunty angle. As with Billy The Kid and Doc Holliday, I went for the posterised look using the desert supergranulators.

So, what I did was to:

• measure out the rectangle in the middle and mask it out with tape
• spatter on some masking fluid, mainly in the background. And add some big round, jagged masked areas looking like bullet holes, most of these in the boring looking top left corner but with one in the bottom right for balance. I didn’t mask out any white highlights today, deciding to paint around them instead. I think portraits look better this way, the edges of the highlights in particular.
• after planning the painting using the Notanizer app, paint desert yellow and orange over all the light, medium and dark areas in the middle rectangle, being careful to leave all the highlights white. Today I mainly used the yellow in the face and hair and the orange everywhere else but dropped plenty of yellow into the orange while it was wet and vice versa.
• once dry, paint a layer of desert brown over all the mediums and darks
• once dry, paint a layer of desert grey over all the darks
• then wet all the background and drop in all five colours wherever it felt appropriate. I remember deliberately going for two darker colours (the green and the grey) along the bottom and up to the right edge of the masked out white frame.
• while the background was still wet, remove the masking tape and paint in some grassy shapes in deser5 green to connect together the background and the portrait
• once everything’s dry, remove all masking fluid and make any corrections that look like they’re needed: today it was Jesse’s right eye that needed some more shadow.

And that was me done. One extra thing worth mentioning is that I had The Good, The Bad And The Ugly soundtrack playing in the background all afternoon. It’s impossible not to be inspired by Ennio Morricone.

I do like the painting I’ve ended up with. It looks like the guy in the photo but doesn’t look like the photo. In this painting, Jesse looks like he’s about to explode with anger. At times this painting was looking like a number of different footballers: Roy Keane, James Maddison, Ryan Giggs. That look that Roy Keane gets in his eyes sometimes is still there and it’s what makes this painting great. Jesse’s up for sale.