Robbie Williams

Someone put up a post on LinkedIn today about Robbie Williams and I realised immediately that he’d make a great portrait subject and am kicking myself for never having thought of painting him before. And as practice for PAOTY if selected, I thought I’d time myself today and restrict myself to four hours. Although I confess that I didn’t start the clock until after I’d identified a source photo, and put it through the Notanizer app.

Colour-wise, I went for the Shire scheme again. Shire has established itself as my favourite for three layer posterised paintings because:

• it feels energetic, with lots of granulation going on
• the colours aren’t too garish
• the colours are more interesting than the desert scheme, although the desert scheme does have its place for historical portraits
• the first layer (unlike the first layer for the tundra scheme) is light enough for pencil marks to show through

I followed my usual process for these paintings and included starry masking fluid spatters before the first layer and salt for texture in the second and third layers. The third layer (Shire grey) is quite light in places after I tried to remove all the starry spatters with kitchen paper before the paint was 100% dry. My premature action also had the weird side effect of amplifying all the salty textures, which was interesting. If I’d not been working against the clock, I’d have waited another ten minutes. I also did some tinkering with the final painting, adding more darks to Robbie’s face (moving the sliding controls in the Notanizer app to give me ideas) and those dark collar lines in the bottom right in what might otherwise have been a large, monotone area. And that was me done.

The final painting is OK, I guess. There’s definitely a likeness of sorts there. I can’t help feeling this would have been much better, though, if I’d waited ten minutes longer before removing the starry masking fluid spatters.

As for timing, the first thing for me to note is that the initial drawing and application of masking fluid took me an hour. That’s an easy checkpoint to remember, one that would give an early indication of whether I’m making good time. The other lesson is that these paintings can take over four hours. To make sure I stay under four hours, I need to think about saving time by:

• leaving out the starry spatters
• working faster
• working through the PAOTY lunch break
• accelerating the drying of the first layer by dabbing with kitchen paper
• investing in a cheap portable hairdryer to speed up drying (but only for paint, not masking fluid)
• sticking to two layers, using the trippy scheme

But that’s all for another day. Meanwhile, Robbie’s up for sale with the price to be found here.