Freebird!

This one’s been coming for a while. It’s a portrait of Allen Collins and Gary Rossington, two of the founder members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and I’m absolutely buzzing after finishing this one.

It’s in posterised style, so I used the Notanizer app to separate my source photo into four values. I wanted to recreate the energy in the air that I managed to capture with my Gary Moore painting, so went for the Shire colours again. So after putting down a pencil outline, I reserved all the highlights as white using masking fluid. I covered all the big highlight shapes too, rather than just outlining the bigger ones, so I could play fast and loose with later layers. In some of those highlighted areas I found myself leaving the odd tiny spot unmasked but thought that tiny spots of colour in the highlights might make them more interesting, so was happy to leave them there. And I put in some masking fluid spatters for a bit of energy. Then it was on with the layers: Shire green/olive/yellow in all the light, medium and dark areas. Then Shire blue over the mediums and darks. And finally shire grey over the darks, with forest brown and green apatite genuine randomly dropped into the background in places.

Then I removed the masking fluid, and made a couple of changes to Allen. I added the shadow along the bottom of his left forearm which I’d somehow missed. And I put some Shire yellow on his t–shirt to help his arm stand out against it: the Notanizer app had given me too big a white shape there and it needed breaking up. And I tinkered a little with both faces and with their hair to improve the likenesses. And after removing all the masking fluid, that was me done.

And, let me tell you my friends, this one’s a masterpiece. There are the likenesses but there’s also the energy and the personality. I think I’ve done these guys proud and hope they’re looking down on me with approval. This painting says everything that I wanted it to say. There’s nothing more to say. Except that, rather than naming this one after Allen and Gary, I just have to name if after their finest track. This one’s up for sale.