Number three in the On The Buses Collection is Jack Harper, played by the late…
Lance Corporal Jack Jones
Only time for one more portrait today and it’s Lance Corporal Jack Jones, played by Clive Dunn. I picked out this portrait because of all Jonesy’s ribbon bars an display. I made the bars the colour stars in this photo as a tribute all those that served in the British army between 1882 and 1918. I would extend that range to 1945 but, to be honest, this whole collection is a tribute to all who served at home or overseas during World War II.
Here’s a full list of Jonesy’s medals which I found at the Dad’s Army fan wiki page. Just reading that list and now understanding what stripes like this mean pushed me towards making them the stars here.
Anyway, after getting down a pencil drawing using a grid, the first colours I put down were those of the medal stripes. I then moved on to dark greys and then lighter greys. I wasn’t sure at the start whether I’d be adding flesh tones and/or background colours to negatively paint Jonesy’s tache and hair respectively. After having a ponder, I decided that a light flesh tone would do a better job than greys around the tache, so added this in. Some (not all) of the white highlights on the face looked too bright so I putting some ivory, the lightest skin tone I have in my marker collection. And then there was the decision on the background. I thought the greys, the flesh tones and the ribbon colours were working so well together that any background colour would just ruin things, so I left the background white and added some light greys in the hair and on top of the hat where lost edges just wouldn’t have worked. And that was me done.
I rate this one as a big success. It’s not just that I got a good likeness of someone that I thought would be really difficult. It’s the personality. A bit of suspicion in the eyes but also pride. And there are those ribbon bars. It’s not often that my artwork stirs emotions in me but this one hits me quite hard.
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