Jimi Hendrix

I have two watercolour blocks here, so straight after drawing Neil Young (and before painting him) I grabbed my other block and drew Jimi Hendrix.  It’s a better drawing, even if that right arm shouldn’t be up as high as that and his eyes are a bit skewy – either his left eye is too high or his right too low.  The guitar should maybe be a bit bigger too – Jimi played left handed, so the end of the guitar is nearer to us than his face and should be bigger.  Whisper it, but this looks better if it’s cropped down to a square by losing the right hand side.

I painted this one while Neil Young was drying.  The skin tones are again in Winsor red, cerulean blue and either raw sienna or yellow ochre or both.  I’d worked from a black and white photo so had no idea what colour the T-shirt should be.  So I just used loads of different colours.  I also used these colours fairly randomly in Jimi’s hair and in the background.

At the end, rather than adding salt, I spattered over Winsor red, cerulean blue and yellow ochre.  These came out as strings rather than spatters, some of them even winding around the guitar neck, so it,s as if they’re musical notes.

This is definitely better than the Neil Young from earlier.  Unless it gets loads of likes and positive feedback on Facebook, it’s not going up for sale though.

I’m also thinking that, at least for portraits like this of individuals, I should do the drawing with pencil rather than pen.  Pen would work, though, for urban sketching of buildings or groups of people.