Michael Portillo

I had quite a long afternoon free today so thought I’d have a go at a posterised watercolour portrait. Today’s subject is faction icon and former MP Michael Portillo, surely a shoe-in as the next Blankety Blank presenter if and when Bradley Walsh decides he’s been taking too much on.

I went for the green colour scheme as I wanted the painting to look sunny. No messing around for hours for me trying to replicate Michael’s skin colours – I just went with the three layers of transparent yellow, cerulean blue and French ultramarine. I tinkered around a little with my usual process today, though. First, I outlined the highlights, then added the masking fluid before outlining the light areas. This meant that I added the masking fluid before erasing all my grid lines. Some of the grid lines are still visible, so I won’t be doing that again. The other thing I did differently was to remove the masking fluid before putting on the third layer. This was only possible because of the lack of complicated edges separating darks from highlights. I was thinking that this might make it easier for me to add the third layer, having a better view of what the final portrait would look like with no masking fluid to confuse me, but I didn’t really notice the difference, so won’t be repeating that experiment either.

I think I’m still building my skills back up after that short hiatus and am not really happy with this one. I felt a little bit unfocussed while painting this one, which is why the likeness wasn’t really there in the eyes, even after I did some tinkering at the end. There are also the problems of grid lines showing and a couple of yellow marks on the nose that don’t match the other yellows. The biggest positive about this one is the choice of colour scheme: it did result in the sunny atmosphere that I was aiming for. It’s a painting that makes me feel happy but it doesn’t work as a portrait. This one won’t be going in the shop window, not that anyone’s likely to want a portrait of the legend on their wall anyway.