Debbie Harry

Starting to feel like I’m back in the swing of things again after this one, my first three layer posterised watercolour portrait in three weeks. This is Debbie Harry, someone who’s been on my list of potential portraits for a while now.

This is a posterised portrait, following my usual process. I picked out the blue scheme today. It was one of many possible schemes that would have suited the subject. I was tempted to go for the Shire scheme but I’ve been using those a lot recently. Despite Debbie’s top being a highlight with just a few shadowy folds, I masked out all the highlighted ares today. So all those creases have been negatively painted as gaps in the masking fluid layer rather than positively painted as blue marks against white paper. I found myself fiddling a bit with the final, quinacridone magenta, layer and water in danger of creating ugly cauliflowers, so sprinkled salt over the background to create a texture that might disguise them.

Once the painting was dry and the masking fluid was off, I found myself having to do some extra tinkering. Debbie’s neck looked too big because of dark hair shapes down the left and on her shoulder. I tried to make the hair look more like hair by adding some individual hairs in cerulean blue and a tiny glimpse of the white top through the hair in white gouache. That didn’t really work, so I added a white gouache highlight on the front of Debbie’s neck that I couldn’t see in my source photo. And I wasn’t entirely happy with the background, so spattered on a little white gouache. And that was me done.

I’ve ended up with a painting that meets but doesn’t exceed expectations. The white top and the folds in it draw the eye and are the star of the show, but the neck still looks too big. The blue background to the right of the microphone stand looks weird but gives the painting an interesting abstract side. This one’s going up for sale, with the price to be found here.