Joe Walsh

I went for a traffic light portrait, so the first layer of colour was transparent yellow on the left and in the middle and rose dore on the right. Then the second layer was cerulean blue in the left and Winsor red in the middle and on the right.  And the third layer was French ultra fine in all three portraits.

As usual, there was some tinkering at the end, trying to find a likeness.  For ideas about where to tinker, I went to my value plan on the Notanizer app and slid the controls up and down.  These would add or take way washes in various places and I’d adjust my existing washes wherever I thought cha fez would improve the likeness.  I wasn’t a slave to the app: the app was an assistant and I made the final choices.  The golden rule when searching for a likeness, though, is that wherever I make a change to one painting, I make the same change to the other two.

As well as searching for a likeness, I looked for differences between my three portraits and made corrections.  And I put a dark French ultramarine shape and to the left of Joe’s head in all three portraits to separate him from the background.

Finally I spattered the second layer colours in the empty triangle in the bottom left and French ultramarine in the empty triangle and in the background behind Joe’s heads.  And that was me done.

It’s a decent job, this one.  The likeness is there but it’s not a photographic likeness (and I can’t believe that I’m already aspiring to photographic likenesses).  And although the three portraits are very similar, there are tiny differences between them that suggest these are portraits painted at three different times with Joe in three different moods.  Joe’s up for sale.

“The most terrifying thing that ever happened to me was that Keith Moon decided he liked me.”