Easy Blue(s)

I’m not normally a great fan but I was watching the snooker last night and witnessed a great match. It went to the very last frame and I promised myself I’d have a go at painting the winner today. So here he is, the new world champion, Wu Yize. I searched round for a good head-on photo and found one. Putting it through the Notanizer app and looking for three or four value plans that might work, I came up with a three value plan that included a broad white horizontal highlight band that I thought might look good, so stuck with that. I had to choose between crystalline and normal watercolour and went for the crystals as they were due an outing.

As usual, I marked down all my value outlines and masked out the highlights. I learned from an error I made with Got The Rain In My Face and put highlights in the right eye rather than the mid tones that the app suggested. I thought midtones wouldn’t show up well enough in the final painting.

I sprinkled crystals over all the dark areas and went over them with a wet brush, taking only short strokes and rinsing the brush regularly, trying to let the colours mix on the paper. I know from experience that mixing them on the paper with a brush or taking long strokes turns all the colour mud. I waited an extra long time for this layer to dry before taking the next step, not wanting to repeat my Jimmy Page error.

For the second step, I sprinkled crystals over ll the mid tones, sprayed them with water, waited a few of seconds, then laid on a couple of layers of kitchen paper and pressed down hard to soak up all the water. In some places in üthe background and on the table where things were looking too “discretely spotty” rather than textured, I rubbed some kitchen paper over the marks to create streaks. And, after removing all the masking fluid, that was me done.

In evaluating this one, it’s important to remember it’s in crystalline watercolour, a medium that’s nigh on impossible to control. And I think this one’s not come out that badly. The likeness isn’t great, which is why I’ve named this after a Jimi Hendrix recording which is one letter away from a snooker term. And the hand on the table is terrible, not that the eye is drawn to it, with the cue, the right arm and the background band all drawing the viewer to the eyes. The best features of this one are the big white areas: the two arms and the background band. The spotty mid tones and the odd cauliflower in the darks are standard fare for this medium and part of the charm. And the colours in the darks have worked out well, those in the back standing out against the darks behind them and the darks on the right of the face being lighter than those in the hair and close to the mid tones on the other side of the face. You know, I think I’ve talked myself into putting this one up for sale. The price can be found here.