Pulp Fiction

I picked a shot with the John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson characters in it.  I’ve not had mulch chance to practice portraits lately so thought I’d take advantage of the chance to do two at once.  I always also attracted by the light in both characters’ hair and all that black in the ties and whistles.

I started with the darkest areas as usual, and with my well established black recipe.  That’s a layer of delft blue, then dark pt(also green, dark red and helio blue reddish.  And then repeat, so that’s four layers if colour in total.  In between layers I would use those same four colours in the faces and some other colours in the background on the left.  The highlights on the suits started white but I added in all four of my black ingredients, quite softly.  I also added some light yellow glaze over all highlighted areas (suits, faces, gun, window frames, hand,…).  With some of the later coats, I wasn’t that bothered about filling shapes exactly to the edges – I like the way my coloured pencil portraits look aged and fuzzy and wanted to encourage this.

Finally I burnished the gun and any highlights in white and then smoothed out everything else wot( a paper stump.  And that was me done.

I’ve not really achieved likenesses for either actor and SLJ’s shortened arm looks odd but I do like the look in Travolta’s eyes and and the highlights in both characters’ hair.  The rainbow colours in SLJ’s hair look great but were just a happy accident.  After careful consideration, though, this one won’t be going in the shop window.

Still, I got some practice in.  I’m starting to feel that once that art studio is fully operational the standard of my artwork is going to go through the roof.