The Cage

Not a long afternoon for me today, so I went for a quick portrait with the crystalline watercolours. The subject today is Susan Oliver playing Vina in the guise of an Orion slave girl in the Captain Kirk-free Star Trek pilot episode The Cage. This episode was later chopped into pieces and used as flashbacks in The Menagerie, the only two part Star Trek episode. And the shot that I used appears as the final image in the closing episode of every episode in the first series (or is it the second?).

As usual, my process was to:

Create a three value plan using the Notanizer app, put down pencil outlines and mask out all the highlights. I also sputtered on some more masking fluid to create the hint of a starry background in the dark areas and a few curved lines for highlighted hairs. And here’s how things looked at that stage:

When the masking fluid was dry, I sprinkled crystals over lol the dark areas and brushed a wet brush through them, washing the brush after every stroke. Within Vina’s hair, I tried to make my brush marks follow the hairs that I could see in my unnotanized source photo. That left the painting looking like this (except that the photo here is before I sprinkled on crystals ready for the next step):

The painting wasn’t looking great at this stage, but that’s not unusual. The next step was to sprinkle crystals in the medium tone areas. I used mainly yellow and the lighter greens in these areas, looking to hint at the green skin tones. I sprayed the crystals generously with water until they started visibly mixing, then quickly placed a couple of layers of kitchen paper on top and pressed down to suck up all the water. I removed the paper, then used more paper to soak up any excess. That left the painting looking like this:

Even this stage I never have any idea what the final painting’s going to look like. It’s not until I remove all the masking fluid that I get to see. Maybe it’s because the masking fluid is blue rather than white and everything would be clearer with white masking fluid but I don’t care. I like the thrill of removing the masking fluid, discovering highlight areas that I thought were mid or dark tones and being presented with my first sighting of the image.

Anyway, today I was less than happy with the result. I tapped out a few crystals , wet them and added more dark marks around the mouth and eyes in an attempt to improve the likeness. I would have added a complementary colour to the background (either azo orange of cadmium red) were it not for part of the background in the top left already being a midtone. So that was me done.

I’m not that happy with this one. There doesn’t seem to be any life or emotion in the eyes. On the other hand, if I cover up one of the eyes (either one) the painting bursts into life. So maybe the eyes aren’t working together properly. Is one looking down and the other forwards? I think this one’s going in the reject pile rather than the shop window.