Ding Liren

And next up is world number 3, Ding Liren.  He's not doing too well at the candidates with just 2.5/7 at the point the tournament was paused.  I think his preparation suffered when he was put in quarantine after heading from China into Russia.  Anyway, this is an art blog, not a chess blog, so that's enough of that.

How's this portrait?  Well the likeness still isn't there (is it ever?).  In reality, Ding looks very fragile, as if he could get blown away by the wind.  I've not captured that at all - this guy looks much tougher physically.  The best bit about this picture is the eyes - I was really careful drawing the irises so that it was clear they were looking upwards at the guy opposite.  And, just like with Grischuk's spotlight, I added some background to bring out some personality - this time it's that yellow band, which draws attention to the Ding stare.

I'm thinking ahead to how this fits into the final set of portraits.  This one was in landscape format (just in case I can find a six portrait, two landscape, eight aperture frame).  The background is a bit like the Grischuk one, so I now have two like that, two plain white and one black.  And the black delineation was done using a rollerball rather than a marker, adding a bit of variety - I must do this at least once more, maybe two or three times.

Finally, I'm starting to think that when my dark blue marker runs out I need to replace it with another dark blue but one that's not so powerful.  I'm finding this one just too dominant when laid over other colours.  It would be good to do these blue jackets in dark blue and dark grey (or even black) but I just can't lay the two colours on top of each other.

Alexander Grischuk

Still tearing through the players at the 2020 FIDE Candidates tournament, starting today with Alexander "Sasha" Grischuk.  He's drawn all seven of his games so far after getting into good positions but not leaving himself enough time on the clock to find the win.  He's spending 40 of 50 minutes on single moves when he only has 120 minutes to make a single mood.

I thought I'd experiment a bit more with this one.  I included some green and yellow in the flesh tones to make him look a bit less human.  And I added the big pink spotlight behind him to contrast with the greens and to give the impression that he's going into a really deep think.

End result?  Well the experiments both worked out well.  The likeness isn't there but that's becoming a common theme.  And there's something about my style that's unifying the collection together, even though they're all very different so far, which I quite like.

The worst thing about this one is that it's in landscape format, which will make framing the set tricky. Are there frames around with eight apertures?  Three portrait along the top and bottom and two landscape in the middle?  If there is, then I need to draw one of the remaining four players in landscape format.

Actually, make that two bad things.  I'm worried now that the spotlight looks like the flag of Japan and makes Sasha look Japanese.

Wang Hao

My last chess portrait for the day.  I really should have stopped at two.  This portrait is instantly recognisable as my work but not so instantly recognisable as Wang Hao.  I may well have another attempt at this guy later on if I end up deciding to mount all eight players together.

I think I struggle with blue jackets too.

Ian Nepomniachtchi

Next up is joint tournament leader Ian Nepomniachtchi, generally referred to as Nepo, although I don't know whether people call him that to his face.

I had a go here at having a black background and not delineating where the background stops and Nepo's head starts.  If anybody wants to have a go a guessing, I should probably point out that Nepo often wears a topknot.

In terms of likeness, I don't think this is as good as the Alekseenko drawing.  But I think I've managed to bring in whatever it is about Nepo that would scare me to death if I met him in real life.

Two down, four to go, although that might be it for today.

Kirill Alekseenko

Being stuck inside all day, I don't see much hope for doing many watercolours for a while.  And with me actually having a piece of work on a the moment, I won't have much time for any sort of artwork in the week.  On the other hand, weekends are looking a bit more empty now than I don't need to be driving my youngest to football training on Saturdays and matches on Sundays.

So I do have a bit of time to do some drawing at weekends.  I needed a theme, so I'm going for chess players.  In particular I'm going to have a go at drawing all eight players who were competing in the FIDE Candidates tournament that had to be paused earlier this week so that the French, American, Dutch and Chinese players could all get home before Russia went into full turtle mode.

First up is young Russian grandmaster Kirill Alekseenko.  I thought I’d start with one of the easier ones.  I knew from the start that the outline around his right forearm would be the best bit.  One big long sweep with the black marker at the end, without caring whether it exactly dilineated the border between flesh tones and background.  The flesh tones are good too.  And I think the way I've only put in the chess pieces quite sketchily works well.

So I'm quite pleased with this.  It's not going up for sale.  I want to have a go at all eight players first and see if I can come up with something that uses all eight portraits, even if it's only a case of framing them in something with eight apertures.

Urban Watercolor Sketching, Felix Scheinberger - Book Review

This is a weird book.  I went into it open-eyed, already aware that, despite its name, this wasn’t a book on urban sketching.  I mean, you only need to flick through it to see that it's full of these weird caricature-like drawings of people with huge lips, button noses and exaggerated postures.  And they're not really painted either.  Lots of the drawings are just left unpainted and those bits that are painted aren’t painted accurately, with paint inside and outside the edges of the shapes - no colouring in here.  And the colours are adventurous - who needs flesh tones when you can paint half off a face blue or red and leave the rest white?

These drawings look great and I was looking forward to reading about them in a book called Urban Watercolor Sketching.  Unfortunately I discovered that there wasn’t very much in there about this drawing/painting style and that most of the book was about general watercolour painting.  There were a few interesting tips towards the end but not as many as I'd have hoped for.  And a lot of the text wasn’t really worth reading, either talking about where colours come from and how paper is made or just making encouraging noises about how a painting is about what the artist sees and how if someone else can't see it that's because the moment has passed.

So we have a book with a title, pictures and text that form a weird, inconsistent threesome.  If anything, the two of the three that are closest together are the text and the title and, with a different set of drawings in the book, it might have all hung together.  I wouldn’t have liked it though - I'd still have been marking it down for being a bit light on content.

Anyway, I'm giving this book two stars.  The illustrations are its one redeeming feature.  I enjoyed looking through them and it's inspired me to have a go at something different: a looser approach to drawing and a very loose approach to colouring the drawing in using watercolour.

But, yeah, weird, weird book and I'm not sure I'd buy it again.  Paperback, 156 pages, two palettes.

🎨🎨

Henry Fonda, Once Upon A Time In The West

Back on the markers again and, for whatever reason, I've developed a taste for drawing portraits.  Today, though, rather than looking for photos of Facebook friends, I went for a still from a Western.

This is based on a shot from Once Upon A Time In The West, a film that was also the inspiration behind my most popular painting.  Unlike with my Western paintings, I drew this without using a grid, and it shows.  It's not a great Henry Fonda likeness but it's unmistakeably my artwork.  I like the look of weariness in the eyes, even if it wasn't present in the original still.  And the use of purple, blue and bright pink in the skin tones (along with greys and flesh tones) seemed to work well.

And, you know what?  This one’s up for sale.  It's about 5.5 inches by 8 and would come in a wooden frame without a mount.