Stuart Broad

But so much went wrong with this one.  I don’t think I was in the right mood to paint today and should have sat back and read a Western, but too late now.  I with a grid and drew upside down but never really got a likeness.  I should have kept trying but went ahead and reached for the pencils instead – as I said, I wasn’t in the right mood. I actually went through two layering and wetting stages: after the first the face was too yellow (especially compared to the neck) and the background wasn’t dark enough to negatively paint the hands and shirt, so I applied more colour and wet it again.  This normally ruins a paint8 g but improved things slightly today, although I still think this is a big flop.

So what’s wrong with this one?  Well

– Not enough time spent trying to get a likeness – this looks more like Dominic Cork to me

– Stuart’s left iris right in the middle of the eye rather than looking to his left.  Very poor on my part.

– Colours layered on the face rather than used sparingly like in my better figure drawings.  Finally getting coloured pencils has resulted in me doing things with inktense pencils that work with coloured pencils but nor with inktenses.

– No planning with colours.  I just used everything.  Another thing that works with coloured pencils but not with the inktenses.

– Just lots of laziness and no thinking.  Too many shapes on the face (right side of his mouth, dark areas around the left eye socket) that are the wrong shape or wrong value and where I can’t blame the initial drawing.

On the other hand, there’s one thing I do like and that’s the colours that I’ve ended up with in the background.  Layering multiple colours has left me with some really moody darks.

That’s me done for today.  I just looked at the weather forecast, hoping for some warmer days with no rain but it looks like there’s a cold spell on the way, so no plein air work coming soon, let alone watercolour.  I nee to start thinking about what to use as my Landscape Artist of The Year entry for 2023.