Carlo Ancelotti

Back into my comfort zone today with a posterised portrait using the Shire colours, following my usual process. This is Carlo Ancelotti, one of the world’s greatest ever football managers and, at the time of writing, head coach of the Brazillian national football team.

I deliberately picked a pose with a lot of Carlo’s face in shadow, hoping to get a similar effect to that in my most recent David Gilmour portrait. I also tried to soften the edges of my value shapes in places, especially with my middle tone layer in Shire blue. While working in the final, Shire grey, wash, I decided to have more dark areas than in my original plan, so dusted one of the sliders in the Notanizer app to tell me which mid tones to darken. I’ve ended up with hardly any mid-tones, making this look more like a three value painting.

It’s not too bad this one, with the gravitas and quizicality coming through loud and clear, even if these only appeared at the very end when the masking fluid came off. But I’ve caught it out the corner of my eye a couple of times and seen hints of Gordon Brown and, to my horror, Prince Andrew. Carlo’s definitely good enough to go up for sale, though, and his price can be seen here.