Angels In Chains

A little bit more time to spend on painting today, so a day off from painting figures. But I’m still not feeling free enough to be able to concentrate on a proper watercolour painting, so I went for the crystalline watercolours instead. I’ve gone for a triple portrait of Jacklyn Smith, Farrah Fawcett and Kate Jackson starring in Angels In Chains, the favourite Charlie’s Angels episode of any male in a certain age cohort.

As usual, I split the portrait into values and then:

• reserved the whites with masking fluid
• sprinkled crystals over the darks and painted them in with a wet brush
• sprinkled crystals over the mid tones, sprayed them with water, waited a few seconds, then lifted off all the water with paper towels
• removed the masking fluid

Something never felt quite right about this one: maybe I should be sticking with figures until the World Cup’s over. Whatever the cause, the likenesses aren’t right and the white highlight in Kate’s left eye (she’s the one on the right) is too big and wrongly positioned. You can tell I knew this was going badly because I’ve not been very careful removing the masking fluid and have smudged the colours in a few places. What I like most about this one is that it’s unmistakably my work. But it’s not good enough to go in the shop window.