Private Joe Walker

Next up is Private Joe Walker, played by James Beck, one of my favourite two characters in this TV show. Ā What I liked about the source photo was the two tone background with a dark colour at the top contrasting with the light hat and the light colour at the bottom contrasting against the dark overcoat. Ā  I made a first attempt at Joe yesterday, again starting with a dark grey and adding some lighter greys for mid values but this time I threw in some dark blue on the tie.

Here’s where I stopped working:

I wasn’t happy with this one, so didn’t post it here, intending to have a go at rescuing things today. Ā My two biggest issues were the overcoat not really working and the blue in the tie being too jarring, even mod my purposes.

So this morning I identified another problem, which was that the dark grey wasn’t as dark as I wanted it to be. Ā So I went over all my dark greys with a black marker, giving everything a more noir look and making Joe look a bit shiftier. Ā At the same time, I went over whole overcoat in black, deciding that it was more important that the black colour dominate the painting than that I showed off all the highlights and creases. Ā I also went over some of my light grey midtones with slightly darker greys.
I did. have a plan in reserve, which was to replace the white in the background with light blue of the dark blue in the tie was still too jarring but I thought it was fine, so held off. Ā I did., though, add a medium grey shadow on the wall behind Joe just use the amount of white on show and added some marks on the wall. Ā Both or these increased the noiriness of the painting. Ā And that was me done.
Just like Sergeant Wilson, Joe’s recognisable but the likeness isn’t quite right. Ā And I’m not keen on that black mark down the right edge of his face, even if it was there in the source photo. Ā But there’s that noir mood coming through. Ā He looks genuinely shifty. Ā This feels like real life rather than a cozy family sitcom. Ā The collection’s starting to come together.

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