Peter Wyngarde

Time for another posterised watercolour portrait in an attempt to impress the PAOTY judges. This is the late actor Peter Wyngarde who specialised in playing dandy dilletantes. I went for the Shire colour scheme because it’s been just over twelve weeks since my last one and I need to keep in practice. I picked out this particular shot of Peter because, despite a shortage of mid tones, I liked the arrangement of darks and lights and because the horizontal bars on the left and Peter’s hairline and hand form an interesting arch-shaped composition.

I followed my usual process for posterised paintings in this colour scheme with one difference. The shire scheme results in quite cold portraits, well suited to subjects with a highly focused personality. But after Reading my latest Charles Reid book, I was wondering whether the Shire scheme might be too cold and whether it could be warmed up in places. So as well as using Shire yellow, Shire green and Shire olive in the first wash, I mixed some cadmium red (a granulating colour) with the yellow to get an orangey brown, and also used this. In that first coat, I was careful to use yellow in the forehead, green on the chin and the warm colour on the nose tip, cheeks and lips. I also used some of the warm colour in Peter’s hair, trying to slightly distinguish it from the background behind. The head is slightly distinct from the background but this may be down to how I applied the Shire grey in the final layer. And there may be a bit in warmth the cheek under Peter’s left eye but if there is it’s barely visible. I don’t think I’ll try adding the cadmium red again.

After painting in three layers and removing all the masking fluid, I decided that the white highlight along Peter’s right shoulder wasn’t working, so went over it in Tundra yellow and Tundra blue to convert it to a mid tone. That made things look better. And that was me done.

I think this is a decent enough painting. I’m putting it up for sale, with the price to be found here. There’s a definite gaze in the eyes and a great arrangement of highlights and darks. It’s hard to tell exactly what some of the shapes are in the hand, but screw up your eyes and things become clearer. It’s an interesting painting.