Jerry Garcia

The idea for this one came from a Claudia Selene video.  After spending some money on art gear, Jackson’s offered me a free 90 minute course at Etchr.  I chose a portrait demonstration by Claudia.  She picks a photo of a subject that was suitable for chiaroscuro (that’s two value, black and white) painting.  She spends a lot of time getting pencil outlines down for all the light and shadow shapes using a triangulation method, then colours in all the dark areas with lots of colours and, bang, she’s done.  I didn’t follow Claudia to the letter, instead just picking and choosing ideas, as you’ll see.

I did some googling around looking for a good chiaroscuro subject.  I thought guitarists might make good subjects and found four that I will probably end up painting.  First up, though is Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.  Rather than just going a headshot,  I thought I’d include some fingers and guitar strings as guitar strings tend to work out well for me,

For the initial pencil drawing, I followed Claudia’s advice, getting down an accurate pencil drawing of all the dark and light areas and not bothering with any edges separating dark from dark or knight from light.  But whereas Claudia used triangulation techniques to get an outline down, I used the grid method.  At times, though, I did follow Claudia’s lead and played with the magnification on the iPad so that my painting and source were the same size, allowing me to do some measuring with the pencil.

Once the pencil outlines were down, I masked out the smallest light areas, just like Claudia, but then also spatters on some masking fluid as I was wanting there to be a bit of magic in the air.  And I added a few stray hairs here and there and the guitar strings and frets using masking fluid in a mapping pen,

For colours, Claudia suggests sticking to dark colours but I wanted some bright, psychedelic colour in there, befitting such a Grateful subject.  So I picked out French ultramarine, Winsor red and transparent yellow, putting this one in the key of triadic right.  And I thought I’d supplement these with viridian green and hematite violet genuine, two colours that don’t get as much action as they deserve.  When it came to adding the colours, Claudia has a genius suggestion that I followed.  Rather than wetting all the dark areas, I wet most of the dark areas but not the edges.  When I added paint, I then had to use the brush properly along the edges, which gives much harder edges than I’d have got if I’d wet the paper right up to the edge.  At this stage, I put all five colours down fairly randomly, my only conscious decisions being around keeping the colours balanced over the page.  After the first colours were down, I sprayed more water over the page, then sprinkled on salt, something Claudia didn’t do but didn’t rule out.  And where there were edges I wanted to soften, I tried to do this with a wet brush.

When the painting was dry, there were a few things I wasn’t happy with.  Jerry’s highlighted hair was looking like a halo rather than hair, with the darkest bits looking like all of his hair.  So I put on some hematite violet genuine and a grey mixed from my three primaries.  After a few attempts and some dabbing  with kitchen paper I eventually reached something just about acceptable.  I also used the hematite violet and mixed grey on Jerry’s hand and on some of the other white areas.  The guitar was looking a bit too white, so I mixed some ultramarine with the hematite violet, put on a watery wash and dabbed at it.  That seemed to work.  I glazed over Jerry’s guitar strap with hematite violet because the light buckle on its own wasn’t enough to make my brain conjure up the whole strap.  And finally I added a second layer of paint in a few places that looked as if they needed it, avoiding any areas where the salt was having an effect.

After everything had dried, I removed all the masking fluid and any residual salt and that was me done.

And keep your voices down please but I quite like this one.  There’s a definite likeness there and my eyes have been opened to how it’s possible to get a likeness in chiaroscuro just by accurately mapping out the dark and light shapes.  I’m expecting that people on Facebook will be saying that this looks like Dave LeeTravis or Roy Wood but these opinions will be coming from people that have never seen footage of the Dead.  Anybody who’s seen Jerry Garcia will know that this is him.  The colours and the salt are working well but I’m especially pleased with my decision to glaze over the guitar strap – that strap brings things to life.

Needless to say, Jerry’s up for sale, and at a price cheaper than many a Dick’s Picks concert recording. To see the price, click here.