Tres Hombres

I wanted to have another go at painting ZZ Top after failing so badly a couple of days ago.  This time, though, it would be in watercolour and using the desert supergranulators, a set of colours befitting of a band from Texas.  No other colours were used other than the desert colours.

I started by putting down a drawing using a grid.  Then I added highlights.  As well as the recommended highlights I added some in the sunglasses, which I thought might work well.  Once the masking fluid was dry, I put in the first glaze.  It was mainly desert orange but I varied it with desert yellow in places, in particular anywhere in the faces where I thought the tones were a bit lighter.  I charged in the odd extra bit of colour or spotted in some water in places, just to get the supergranulators partying.  And once that was all dry, I put on the second glaze.  This was in tundra brown and I again tried to get it doing tricks by adding water and dry paint.  That was all by the book, I then started deviating.

While the second glaze was drying, I decided that this one would benefit from a bit of colour in the background.  So I wet the background and out in lots of random yellow and orange and a bit of brown.  For my brushstrokes I pushed the brush into the paper, getting the bristles to bend and splay out everywhere.  I tinkered for a while and, just as it seemed I’d been tinkering for too long and that cauliflowers were starting to appear, I dabbed the background all over with kitchen paper to dry it and to leave an interesting understated colour.

The third layer was mainly desert grey.  The band had some interesting patterns on their jackets in places which I tried to suggest in a number of ways, dripping in water to create cauliflowers, charging in tundra green and charging in tundra yellow.  Nothing worked to my satisfaction and I eventually decides to just leave the suggestion of a pattern by putting on more tundra grey and dabbing it off with kitchen paper to suggest the patterns.

For finishing touches, I looked for ways to add or remove paint to improve the likenesses and, once I was happy, spattered on a little desert grey and desert brown in the background.  And that was me done.

This one’s a big improvement on two days ago and I like it.  There’s a vague suggestion in the background colours that this is a desert scene, which I like, but the figures don’t look like they’ve been sculpted in sand, which would have been good.  What this does look like, though, is an old, faded black and white photo with all those sepia-like tones.  This one has atmosphere to it.  It’s up for sale.