It's my birthday and the front page headline on stash news is that I’m going…
What Happens In Manchester Stays In Manchester
Yesterday was a day for oil pastels, so I took a look through the box of CDs that I currently have out in the studio, seeking potential portrait subjects. And I came up with Sir Tom Jones. As well as being a musical and alpha male legend, he’s been the subject of the final commission on Landscape Artist Of The Year. He was just begging to be painted. Not being in the mood for beards, I picked out a photo of a young Tom. I cropped down the photo to a size that would also include his hand on the microphone – the judges on LAOTY have a thing about hands, so I really should include them more often.
I put down a pencil outline using a grid and then added the colour, starting from the darkest shapes in the face, then working outwards. After trying various colours colours in his hair, I decided that black would work best there, so went over it all in black. I also made the jacket a boring black with no impressionistic tints, deciding that having both the jacket and hair shapes in black would make for an interesting composition. Later on, though, I made the hair a bit more interesting by scraping off bits of black to expose the colours underneath.
I had big problems with the likeness on this one. I eventually gave up on it last night and came back to it for about an hour today to keep searching. I moved the nose and mouth up and down the face several times, kept widening the mouth whenever it shrunk and added a bit more bulk to the chin. I kept finding that the hair was too big and had to shrink it back two or three times. I also tinkered with the eyes but they never really changed. And eventually I saw that I wasn’t making any progress, so stopped knowing that this was the best I’d be able to do. And that was me done.
And, no, it’s not a great likeness. I can see bits of Sir Tom there but I can also see Engelbert and Elvis. So I’m not going to name it after Sir Tom but just give it a name that makes it sound like I’ve painted a random washed out nobody with dyed hair performing at the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club. It’s my attempt to protect my self worth. Still, there’s some good stuff there. The shirt, hand and microphone are all good and the inventive naming has created a story. Maybe I’ll put this one up for sale.
Looking forward, though, I think my oil pastel paintings need to be closer views if the head (so with no hands). So many of my problems in this one stemmed from the frustration of not being able to add accurate details in the eyes and mouth because the pastels were too big and clumsy. But we’ll see. Maybe I can look for poses with hands covering part of the face?
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