Buddy Guy: Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues

Today’s painting is a portrait of guitarist Buddy Guy, based on the cover of his Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues album (Amazon link here: as an Amazon Associate, I earn commission from qualifying purchases but this costs absolutely nothing extra to you). I spent most of my walk today thinking about how to do this one. I eventually decided on a crystalline watercolour painting (rather than a posterised trippy portrait or a disguised landscape) and to go with landscape format rather than portrait. The landscape format, as well as mimicking the album cover, gives the portrait room to breathe and makes the viewer wonder what Buddy’s thinking.

As is usual for me with crystalline watercolours, I started by creating a three value plan using the Notanizer app, putting down pencil outlines and making out all the highlights. I also spattered on some starry making fluid spots in the background. Then I sprinkled crystals all over the darks and started wetting them. I started on the face, working accurately with a small brush but then loosened when I got to the big area on the right. In the big area, I stared by spraying all the crystals. My original intention had been to let the colours all run into each other but I made the dumb move of trying to wipe wavy marks into them with kitchen paper. This just created mud, so I dried it all off, sprinkled on more crystals, sprayed them and let the colours run together. Even then I couldn’t resist making some fine horizontal and vertical marks with kitchen paper. But after that I left the darks alone.

Once the inks were dry, I sprinkled crystals over the midtones, sprayed them, left them for a few seconds and then soaked off as much of the colour as I could with kitchen paper. And, after letting it dry and removing all the masking fluid, that was me done.

This isn’t one of those paintings where I can list everything that went well and everything that didn’t. There’s lots to comment on because crystalline watercolour always brings surprises, but all today’s surprises are the sort that some people will like and others won’t. Part of the face round Buddy’s left eye has gone after the background ran into it. The same happened down near his mouth where some midtones are too dark. The microphone is a bit hard edged and simplistic. And the face is all quite loose and blends into the background, a background that’s quite dark, almost black but with visible tints. On balance I like it, and I think the landscape format definitely gives it a spiritual atmosphere. Buddy’s up for sale, with the price to be found here.