Nostalgia

Today, for some reason, an old piece I had painted during LFI 2021 popped into my head. I have since sold it, so I only have the .jpg of it to remind myself, but I felt a sense of nostalgia for that playful style I learned from Deb Weiers, first in a class with her and then with Lesson #34 in 2021, so I decided to do another. For that one, she started with a reference photo of a guy in a vintage mug shot, so I looked for another and repeated the experience to a certain extent.

This is a fun and complex process of building up from nothing to a whole lot of something. First, pencil and charcoal marks on the paper; then a wash of three Daler Rowney inks, pooled together to cross and blend, and then more marks made with the wrong end of a paintbrush into the ink.

Then the drawing: Deb doesn't stick to her reference photo in any real way, but I like a little more realistic rendering, so I drew the face in Uniball pen, and then went in and highlighted with white gesso and shaded with India ink. Following that was some collage for the guy's bushy eyebrows, and then the addition of color for the lips and hair. Finally, the image is completed with acrylic paint for the jacket and Posca pen for the shirt stripes.

And then I followed Deb's lead and used black gesso on the background (leaving out some fun shapes in color to float in the background), to make the figure really pop. A few finishing tweaks—some freckles, some linework on the lips and on the background shapes—and it's time to add a signature.

The hair got too dark—I should have thought ahead and kept the color to pure yellow and orange at that end of the paper. I could have painted over it with white gesso and then redone the color, but I have had variable success painting over the top of gesso, so I decided to leave it be.

Although I did adhere more closely to the original image than Deb did, this piece is a reminder that being playful and adding details that are pleasing to the entire design without worrying unduly about likeness is a good thing to do occasionally! Sometimes portraiture can get really precious, but unless you're painting someone as a commission and they have to be recognizable to the relative who's paying the bill, why be so rigid?

This is Walter Smith, who was arrested and booked for breaking and entering. "WalterB&E," in all the above-named materials, on 140-lb. Fabriano paper, 9x12 inches.