Next up is Private Joe Walker, played by James Beck, one of my favourite two…
Private Joe Walker II
For my second portrait today I had another go at Joe Walker. This actually my third attempt. I tried using the same source photo as first time round but was struggling to get any sort of likeness, so have up and picked out another pose. This alternative pose also had a lot more tie on display, allowing me to include more extra colour in an attempt to balance all that extra colour behind Godfrey and Pike.
Obviously, apart from the ring and tie, this is all in black and various greys. There are quite a few layers in this one. The darkest shadows started as a dark grey but were eventually turned to black. And I was never really happy with Walker’s whistle. It started off in light grey with medium grey creases but ended up as a very dark grey with black creases. I also put on a flesh colour towards the end to supplement the light greys in the face and to bring in a bit of life.
I think Walker might be the character in the collection who it’s most difficult to capture a likeness of. But eventually, after going over the dark greys with more dark greys and then black, I got something close. It felt to me as if I was never going to get closer than this, so I stopped there.
I thought about adding a coloured background but, nah, there’s enough colour in the tie.
What I’ve ended up with is something with a good enough likeness and enough guest colour to be able to replace the original Joe Walker in the collection. The jacket and the hand aren’t perfect but the eyes are drawn to the face. Story–wise, Joe’s not as shifty looking as he was the first time around but there’s something else to him, a bit of Wild West hussler that adds that little bit extra. I’m happy with this. Two more to go, plus Wilson probably needing to be replaced.
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