Mel Smith

Look, I’ll make this quick today. Hartlip has been cut off from the internet, so I’m at Medway Services typing this up and quite fancy getting home at some point. I went for a coloured pencil portrait, thinking that I might end up spending a couple of days over it and that the internet might be back before I finished. But here I am at the service station. Today’s subject is the late Mel Smith, a fine comedy actor.

I followed my usual process, first putting down a pencil outline, then colouring in all the dark areas and shadows to give me something to hang the rest of the painting off. I coloured these in using my usual four layer black, made of Delft blue, dark red, dark pthalo green and hello blue reddish. After that, I filled out the rest of the face and shirt with whatever colours I could see in my source photo if I concentrated hard. I had the Grateful Dead on in the background so was extra imaginative and jammy. I later darkened parts of my dark areas with another set of four layers of the same colours and a bit of indigo, trying all the time to blend the lighter bits of those dark areas into the joining light areas.

For the background I started with a single layer of a warm grey. Then I went down the page with a blended set of bands from yellow to orange to warm red to cool red. Then I added another set of blended warm colours, using slightly different colours and with the colour changes in different places. Finally I put a layer of burnt sienna over the whole background.

I forgot to blend the colours with a paper stump yet again and instead burnished everything with one final layer of pencil. I used shy blue in the shirt, a light warm grey in the background, ivory over most of the face and white over the lightest bits. For the hair, I used the grey and the ivory, trying to blend the hair into both the background and the face. Finally, I brushed over a layer of coloured pencil blender. And that was me done.

This one’s not bad but not perfect either. I can kind of see Mel in there but it’s also not Mel. And I can see some personality. But something’s not right. I’ve either nailed the personality but not the likeness or vice versa or maybe I’m only halfway there on both. I’m not sure. Anyway, Mel’s up for sale.