Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

And today’s second portrait is Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

A longer shot, this one, with more of the body showing (looking for variety).  The first player to have his name on the portrait (more variety).

There wasn’t really very much special about the source photo to start with, so I though I’d add a background.  Rather than another plain background, I wanted to follow the approaches with Ding and Grischuk and use a pattern on the background to bring out a bit of mental intensity.  So I started with diagonal stripes parallel to the line between MVL’s eyes and the board.  Orange would have complimented the suit better but that would have made this one too similar to the Giri portrait.  I didn’t especially like the purple stripes, so I put some yellow in the top right for some variety.  Didn’t like that either, so I went all over the background in yellow and made the purple stripes wider so that there were just a few thin shafts of yellow sunlight coming through.  I also left a white glow around the board.

Not a great one, this.  But let’s see what the eight of them look like together before I decide whether any need replacing.  Only one to go now.