Another watercolour today. I wanted to have another go with the desert supergranulators supplemented with…
Mount Rushmore
Now this is more like it! A painting on an experimental surface that worked. The faces were all torn out of the Mail On Sunday dated 11 August 2019 (next door let me have their paper). I wanted it to be people that I could identify (not just members of the public) and I was choosy about the size of the heads and the direction they were looking. In the end I finished up with, from left to right Harry Maguire (Man Utd but that’s just unfortunate), Ed Sheehan (he was in Game Of Thrones, you know), Rachel Riley (from Countdown) and Andrew Bailey (announced as new Governor of the Bank Of England, 20 December 2019). I glued the faces onto card and painted over with watercolour ground, as before. I had two problems with the preparation. First there’s an ugly bit above Ed’s head where there’s some rogue glue. And second I found the ink on the newspaper leaked a bit into the ground as I was painting it on, making the background a bit dirty looking before I started painting. Maybe if I do something similar to this again I should tear stuff out of the TV guide instead.
So that was the prep. What about the painting? The sky is made of French ultramarine, quinacridone magenta and Indian yellow. Just like with the last painting, I found the surface didn’t behave like watercolour paper: there are some hard edges and cauliflowering in there. Most of the middle ground rocks are made up of French ultramarine and burnt sienna, which work well together an produce a great grey. In places I added some sepia for cracks and shadows. And then the foreground is made of viridian, French ultramarine and Indian yellow. I also used some salt in the rock face – the table salt produced some interesting textures below Harry and Andrew.
Do I like it? Hell yes! The colours are great in the sky, the rock face and the foreground. And I made a great job of choosing the faces, with their sizes and angles combining together into a great composition. Harry, in particular has a smile that lights up the painting, and the sky draws this out by pointing towards him. This one’s a big success and is up for sale.
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