A lot of my recent watercolour portraits seem to have been painted from a distance,…
Nurse Mildred Ratched
This is Nurse Ratched, famously played by Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in a performance that won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1977. Nurse Ratched just does her job but somehow seems to bring out in all of us a hatred of authority, a hatred that only really appears when someone in authority shows no empathy towards others. It was a majestic performance and worthy of a painting.
This is a triple three layer traffic light painting, so:
– identical value plans were created for all three portraits using the Art Assist App
– the outlines were drawn in pencil using a grid
– making fluid was used to reserve whites
– the first layer of colour was in transparent yellow on the left and in the middle and rise dore on the right
– the second layer was cerulean blue on the left and Winsor red in the middle and on the right
– the third layer was French ultramarine in all three cases
At the end I spattered on some French ultramarine and after going for a long walk, removed all the masking fluid and made some very small changes in places. And that was me done.
This isn’t my greatest ever triple portrait but it’s good enough to go up for sale. The left and right portraits seem to have the best likeness, the middle one maybe looking slightly long in the face. None of them make me feel angry, though, so I’ve definitely missed something.
I’ve not much more to say than that. Maybe I should take a couple of days off and leave the energy to build up.
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