Number four in the On The Buses collection is Olive, played by Anna Karen. Recognisable…
Danny Wilde
I didn’t know what I wanted to do today so asked my iPad for ideas. It suggested that I do a portrait using markers. If I do a portrait with the markers I generally follow up with a second portrait on the same day, so I needed to think of a pair of subjects that went together. Having found myself watching so much cheese on the GREAT TV channel late at night recently, there was only ever going to be one choice: The Persuaders!
I found two possible source photos showing both the main characters. One was really dark and shadowy and might make a good watercolour painting another day, so I went for the brighter one. I decided to go for Danny Wilde first, okayed by Tony Curtis.
I thought I’d work in black and white today. After getting a pencil outline down, I went into all the darkest areas with (cool) grey 5, then for the medium tones with grey 3. Things were looking really good at this stage, so I darkened most of the grey 5s to black and most of the grey 3s to grey 4, then went in with the grey 1 and grey 2 in some of the lighter, non highlighted bits. I ended up with six different grey/black values on the page, seven if you count the bits I left white. I used the blender to smooth things out in places.
Right at the end, I coloured the background in orange because I find that the a colourful background emphasises the monotonicity of the greys in a painting like this. And that was me done.
I’m happy with this one. The likeness is there. Good job. It’s up for sale as part of The Persuaders! Collection.
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