Frank Borman

And so it begins. It’s time for another marker portrait collection. It’s the biggest so far with twelve portraits. It’s a collection that’s been on my mind for a while and one that I feel I have to create right now rather than waiting, in much the same way that I decided I really needed to read 1984 in the final months of 1983. Just like with my last two collections, I’m going for three value posterised portraits, with the dark colour being black each time and the lighter colour being different for each portrait.

I picked out my twelve source photos and decided, based on which direction faces were looking, how they could be ranged as two rows of six. Then I allocated my twelve secondary colours to the twelve slots in a pleasing formation, trying to alternate between dark and light secondary colours and to not have similar colours next to each other. That was how individual subjects were allocated their colours. ChatGPT was offering to pick appropriate colours of or each subject but I’m not doing that this time.

So who Frank Borman? Well, he was an astronaut. He was the commander of Apollo 8, which was the first space mission to orbit the moon. They didn’t land on the moon. One step at a time boys. Just reaching the moon, orbiting it and returning home was one of the human race’s greatest achievements.

But is the portrait any good? Well I’m not convinced by the likeness but there’s still a lot to like. The posterised look does fit the 1960s spec race mood and I like how all we can see of the space suit is the loop around the neck and a couple of badges. I think the red is my least favourite of all my planned twelve secondary colours so things will get better. This is a decent start.