And I'm Thumper!

Today's subject is Thumper from Diamonds Are Forever, played by actress Trina Parks.  In this shot, Trina adopts what must be one of the greatest poses in cinematic history and one that's crying out to be painted.

It's in the key of triadic right (transparent yellow, French ultramarine and rose dore) for no other reason than that these three colours are all overdue an outing, with the triadic left combo being used quite a lot lately.  They work well together, which I already knew, but the granulation of that French ultramarine looks really good.  As well as those three colours, there's some titanium white in the fingernails and eyes.

This one is only 8 inches by 6 as I fancied panting something smaller today.  I found that I'd already used the first page of my 8 by 6 pad for testing colours and whether the brush was clean (see pic below) and thought I'd have a go at painting over those tests and incorporating them into the picture.

The original testing hasn’t come through on the final painting, even with me only using transparent colours.  Maybe I'd have been better off adopting a lighter touch and negatively painting some yellow flowers.  It's just that I wasn't in the mood for that.

The painting turned out to be an interesting little workout.  The energy of the pose has come through well and the three colours have produces some interesting background and skin tones.  The face is by far the worst bit.  I had several goes at it before settling on what we have here.  It's a shame the face is in the middle of the picture, everything else is so good that I'd have been tempted to crop it out if Trina had been standing up straight.  But, then again, I wouldn't have painted her in a pose like that.

Thumper did go up for sale at one point but has been taken down now and put in the rubbish pile.  I need to be more choosy about what to put in the shop window.