Galen

Time for an Artgraf painting today. There’s a portrait that I did of Duane Allman two years go today where I wondered whether I should have stopped after spraying water over the dry marks and I thought I’d have another go with a similar process but this time stopping earlier. I wanted a fuzzy, out of focus photo for my subject matter and found a pic of Roddy McDowall as Galen in the Planet Of The Apes TV series, not to be confused with Roddy’s portrayal of Cornelius in the film.

I put down a pencil sketch of Galen, much more loosely than I usually do, using a grid but not using a ruler to measure out exact positions of features and edges. I started by using a candle to mark out some highlights in the hair. Then I made marks with the blue block in the dark areas and with the ochre in the mid tones and went over all of these with a layer of sanguine – the same colours as I’d used for Duane. Then I added in some fairly random bits of red, magenta, yellow and green. Here’s how the painting looked at this stage:

Then I sprayed water over everything and waited, hoping to see good things happening. Here’s what I got:

I wasn’t happy with this. There were some good bits but overall it didn’t work for me. There were too many places (along the top of the head, for example) where the pigment faded towards the edge of a shape, waving a visible pencil outline. I decided not to stop here and added more of the same colours but this time wet them with a brush and tried to reinforce the value shapes that I’d originally started with. And then I really did stop.

I’m happy with the final result. It’s suitably loose and gives the impression of being a very old photograph, something I was trying to achieve. If I could change one thing, maybe I’d try to soften the edge of the hairline just above the left eye. Still, Galen is up for sale, with the price to be found here.