Mike Pratt

I was out of ideas today so took a look through all the photos I’ve been saving up for potential portraits. I came across a photo of the late actor and musician Mike Pratt, most famous for playing a Jeff Randall in Randall And Hopkirk Deceased. I’m sure why I’ve not attempted to create this portrait before now. Maybe it’s because the pose is a bit stilted. Like a LinkedIn photo.

This is a posterised painting in the blue scheme (ish), following my usual process. I picked the blue scheme as it was the most ghostly feeling of my eight posterised colour schemes. And it turns out that, for portraits with a white background, the blue posterised scheme can create the illusion of an aged photo, something I thought was only possible in monotone with sepia. That was a great bonus and what I thought was a stilted pose turned out to be the perfect pose with these colours and the white background.

Oh, and although I said this was in the blue colour scheme, I must admit to a small tweak. I added a tiny amount or potters’ pink to all three colours (the cerulean blue, French ultra marine and quinacrinone magenta). It’s very, very subtle but I can detect a little warmth in places in the light, cerulean blue areas and there may be a bit more granulation everywhere than usual.

Oh, actually there’s another thing. Can I start two successive paragraphs with oh? If I can’t that’s great. I’m here to break rules. Anyway, there’s something else different about this one. I started with a grid to get some outlines down but the only outlines I put down today were for the masked out highlights. My second and third layers (French ultramarine and quinacrinone magenta) were painted on by hand with no outlines to colour in, although I did have the Notanizer app value plan in front of me as a reference. Mike’s simian likeness came out remarkably well, all things considered.

This one’s a success and is going up for sale, with the price to be found here. It’s that combination of blue colour scheme, Potters’ pink magic and white background that creates an antique effect and a story and that elevates the painting to a higher level.