Il Buono

In terms of colour, I wanted something that would link all three paintings together.  I did consider using the same colours for all three paintings but I don’t trust myself to mix the same colours three times.  I’d have to create all three paintings simultaneously and I didn’t fancy doing that.  Instead I hit on the idea of using my three sets of supergranulating paints, one for each painting, giving them all separate personalities.  Sounds like a plan, right?

First up is Blondie, played by Clint Eastwood.  The pose is appropriately relaxed and his trousers and the gap between his legs represented an interesting dark shape opposition–wise.  In the colour allocations, this “good” character had to be given the Shire colours.  I supplement them these days with forest brown and green apatite genuine, effectively giving me six greens and a grey.  For the purpose of this painting, I also used burnt sienna and burnt umber to dull down the greens, add some warmth and create fleshy colours.

I put down an initial pencil drawing, reserved lots of highlights with masking fluid, spattered some masking fluid on the background and protected the edges of the empty gutters along the top and bottom with masking tape.  And then I was ready to go.

I didn’t work back to front today and I instead jumped around all the different shapes in the painting.  I started with the hands because I wanted to get them right.  Most of the colour there is Shire yellow and raw sienna, with some burnt umber in the really dark places and a couple of greens charged in to create a bit of variety.

And then, yeah, I wandered around all over the place painting.  I like how the shirt sleeve came out: I painted on some stripes in Shire blue and then putting some water to blue them.  The belt is good too, with the charged in colours working well.  Where I had most trouble was with the trouser shape.  I started with an underpainting of lots of random colours but was always intending this shape to come out pretty dark.  And it never did, despite there being probably four layers of paint there now.  Burnt umber, Shire blue and Shire grey just couldn’t get  me to a dark enough colour.   Maybe I could have introduced some French ultramarine to the mix but I felt that with the two browns I’d deviated far enough already from the Shire colour scheme.  And the colour I’ve ended up with isn’t too bad.  Who says I need to replicate the source photo anyway?

And then I was left with the problem of the gutters.  I decided to go for a filmspool look by masking out a couple of rows of spots and painting over them.  Knowing when I’m onto a loser, I wasn’t going to try to create a black to paint over the spots and instead painted over with all the greens I’d been using.  I left out the browns from the gutters, wanting to get back to a Shire feel (albeit with those two extra greens).  And I decided to add the handwritten caption in Italian.  It was something that, if I’d not had these gutters to contend with, I’d have masked out in the painting, so why not do it in the gutter?

I’m reasonably happy with this but will reserve judgement until I see all three paintings  together, see how they feed off each other.  The best bit for me in this one is the highlight on the middle fingerboard Blondie’s right hand.  Once you’ve seen it, it’s hard to ignore.  It’s close to perfect.  The shirt sleeve and the belt are great too, but let’s see what happens over the next couple of days.

This one’s not going up for sale as an individual painting.  Instead it’s up for sale as part of a set that includes two more companion pieces.