Sir Bobby Charlton

I tried to change things, I really did.  Starting with the colours.  I went for Winsor blue green shade, Winsor red and Indian yellow as my three main colours (so this is in the key of orange cool), attracted by the neutral colour that the red and blue mixed to (both of them being well away from purple, heading towards orange and green respectively).  I also included burnt sienna to add a bit of warmth and some white gouache at the end for hair and highlights.

This one generally followed the process for John Lydon.  Pencil outline using a grid, then an underpainting in the dark and mid toned areas with my primaries and a little bit of burnt sienna.  And then a dark colour in the dark areas: today that dark was mixed from my blue and red.

Where this one differed to yesterday’s was in the amount of fiddling.  Sometimes you just can’t find a likeness however much you tinker.  And when so much of the tinkering is with the dark colour, you feel compelled to go back over all the rest of the darks with the dark mix again.  So Sir Bobby’s jacket and the area behind his head is now very dark.  On the other hand I like the area to the right if his he’d where I tried to phase out the blue/red mix every time I added a new layer.  At one point I started adding more midtones, using a green mix in some places and warmer, fleshy colours in others.

After I finally decided I was going  to give up, I added white hair and highlights in gouache and tried to use gouache to lighten the flesh surrounding Sir Bobby’s left nostril, which was too dark.  And that was me done.

And this was a disaster.  It looks more like Putin than Sir Bobby.  I’ve not even managed to catch his personality.  This one won’t be going in the shop window.  I feel guilty about not being able to give this legend the send off he deserved.  RIP Sir Bobby.

<Edit: others have suggested a likeness of Gorbachev or King Charles!>