Monty Panesar On Mastermind

Today’s idea came from a YouTube video over breakfast the other day. It was a video of the ten most embarrassing celebrity appearances on quiz shows. Monty (a former England test cricketer) was in there as a Mastermind contestant. I’m told he did pretty badly but doing badly over a minute or two of quick fire questions is nowhere near as bad (in my books) as giving a dumb answer to a question that you’re given time to think about. Monty was hard done by, being picked in that top ten.

Anyway, I saw Monty in the chair and was immediately struck by how his dark turban was indistinguishable from the dark background in the studio. Lost edges always make for a great painting. So I looked through the video again and found a good still to use as my subject matter. I picked out the tundra colours today because of the purple shirt Monty was wearing and the green triangle at the top of his forehead from some sort of head band.

I painted this one in posterised style, using the Notanizer app. I started by putting down a pencil drawing and then masking out the white areas and spattering on a starry background in the dark areas. The first layer is normally just tundra pink, but I used the green for that triangle and blended the green into the pink that formed the rest of the first layer, the blending now hidden by the dated turban, the second layer was blue, as usual. The third layer is normally just the violet, but I dropped the green and the brown into the violet in places for some extra interest and energy. And after removing the making fluid and deciding that no tinkering was necessary, that was me done.

I put down my pencil marks too lightly today, with the consequence that some of my second and third layer shapes are more painted in by eye and less “coloured in” than I was intending. It means Monty’s left eye isn’t quite right but that’s my only issue with this one. His right eye is great and I’ve captured that sense of puzzlement, which is enough to get the likeness over the line.

Monty’s up for sale.