Ned’s Ghost

I was saddened to hear yesterday about the death of Wayne Larkins, an aggressive English batsman from the 1970s and 1980s. If he’d been playing in the 2020s, I’ve no doubt that he’d have gutted into the Bazball playing style and won many more test caps. I saw a great photo of Wayne in a news article, full of interesting highlights and shadows, and had to have a go at turning it into a painting.

Sure enough, when I put the photo through the Notanizer app, I got some great value plans, full of interesting shapes. The three value plans looked best to me. They were mainly mid times with only a few highlights and shadows, so I thought they would work well with the crystalline watercolours. The plan that the app gave me was slightly unbalanced, so I added a highlight along the top of the bat.

Then, as usual, I put down pencil outlines and masked out the highlights. I sprinkled greys and coolers over the shadow ares and painted over them with a wet brush. Then air sprinkled all the greens plus a little red and yellow over everything else, and sprayed them generously with water. But, rather than dabbing off all the water with a paper towel, I wiped off the water with a paper towel in anticlockwise circles to create some directional energy, a bit like I did with Angus Young. And after removing all the masking fluid, that was me done.

I have to say that, despite the energy and the values in the gloves and shirt, I’m disappointed in this one. I think I must have been a bit premature with my second layer of colours. The darks in the gloves have been washed out but the biggest disaster is that the shadow colours in Wayne’s hair have leaked out into his helmet. Any likeness from those simple marks in the face has also disappeared. This could be anybody, not that it looks like anybody human. And there are red streaks below Wayne’s left hand that look like his arm when it shouldn’t be there. But people seem to like this one, so he’s going up for sale, with the price to be found here.

Rest in peace, Ned. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you a better sendoff than this.