Steve Clarke

There’s been too much other stuff going on lately for me to be able to do any painting since Saturday. One of those distractions was Scotland’s win over Denmark on Tuesday night to clinch a place at the World Cup for the first time since 1998. Three of Scotland’s goals were worldies: the one that would have gone straightening from a corner if someone hadn’t stolen it on the line was the by comparison.

That Scotland win propelled manager Steve Clarke with his distinctive eyebrows to the top of my portrait waiting list. It was a close call over whether to paint Steve in statuesque style using the tundra or desert supergranulators or to give the crystalline watercolours a go. I went for the crystalline watercolours as I need a gentle way back after a hiatus: going straight back to full blown watercolours feels like too big a leap.

So, as usual, I came up with a three value plan using the Notanizer app, masked out the highlights, sprinkled crystals over the darks and painted over them with water, sprinkled them over the mediums, sprayed them and dabbed them dry and then removed all the masking fluid. It’s a well trodden path for me. I used a range if interesting colours but tried to use a bit more blue than usual to create a Scottish feel. But somehow the greens and the orange that I used came out very yellow, so there’s a green and yellow feel to this one, with the yellow neck standing out a bit. I thought about doing a final bit of tinkering, darkening bits of the mouth, eyes and eyebrows but decided against it: I can easily imagine the tinkering ruining this one. So that was me done.

I like this one. It’s very much in my style, especially with all that random cauliflowering in the background. It probably doesn’t need that midtone area in the background above Steve’s left eye but that’s not a disaster. With lots of hidden edges , it’s a challenge at times to identify different facial features but I like that too. I can see Steve in there but I can also see Lenin. I just asked number one son who this was and he responded straight away with Steve Clarke. But I don’t think he doesn’t know what Lenin looked like, so that’s little comfort. Steve’s up for sale, with the price to be found here.