Site Clearance

After some long manic days, managed to clear a site for my art studio to be built on.  It's a huge relief to reach this stage as the company building the studio had given me a deadline to provide a photo of the cleared site and there's lots of rain forecast between now and then.  We've had to dismantle some decking on the left and a playhouse that sat above those slabs on the right.  My job over the next couple of days will be to take several trips to the local tip to get rid of all the debris now littering the garden.  After that I may be feeling relaxed enough to get back to painting.

I'm still not sure where the studio will go.  It could be parallel to that fence without the trellis but the width of the studio might mean that it would have to stand quite a way clear of the fence.  It's more likely to end up on the right, parallel to next door's garage.

Got to record my thanks here to Trev, Kevin, Kirsty and Nathan for all their help in clearing the site - I couldn't have done it in my own.

Six More PAOTY Rejections

Ok, if you insist, here are another six portraits that didn't get their artists onto Portrait Artist Of The Year.  There's not just talent on display here but also some amazing story telling and imagination.

Clockwise from top left, we have:

- Kevin Kane

- Steve Parker

- Steve Rolls

- Gemma Cooper

- Alistair Nicol

- Barry O'Sullivan

I'm struggling to find a website for Steve Cooper.  So Steve, if you're reading this and have a website, please let me know!

PAOTY Rejections

I'm finally getting an art studio built in the garden in May but for this to happen, I have until 10 April to prepare the site for it by dismantling a playhouse and some decking and digging up a patio.  That means I'm not going to have much time for painting for a while.

But I can still keep this blog ticking over with news.  I understand that rejection emails have started going out to people that applied to Portrait Artist Of The Year who haven't been picked to appear in the program.  I've applied but haven’t heard any news about my application yet.  And after seeing some of the self portraits that have been rejected I'm not confident.

Here are my favourite five of the self portraits whose artists have declared that they've been rejected.  Their submissions were all amazing and I'm happy to show off their artwork here and to provide links to their websites.  Clockwise from top left, we have:

- Laura Gill

- Danny Byrne - that painting is genius

- Emma Black

- Michael Moore

- Lynn Kennedy

I mean, just look at them!

David

I'm conscious that my output with the Artgraf blocks has been a bit low so far and that I've not really yet worked out how to use them, so with only a short painting window available to me today, I thought I'd give them another go.  I went for a figure drawing again, just because those tailor chalk shaped pans make me want to do huge gestural swooshes across the paper.  Today's model was David, making his debut.

After putting down some pencil outlines, I used the Artgraf blocks to add colour to the figure.  I started with browns in the darkest areas, then added some primaries, with cool colours generally on the left and warms on the right.  I was using the edges and corners of the blocks but may have been using the corners too much and the edges not enough: too much colouring in and not enough gesture.

Once I thought I'd put down enough colour, I added the water.  Just as with the inktense pencils, this is where the surprises come.  And, just as in my previous Artgraf painting I found I'd probably added too much colour.  After screwing up twice like this, the lesson has finally been learned.  I don't need the pre-wetting colours to look anywhere near as dark with the Artgrafs as I do with the Inktense pencils.  The paper need to look as if the paint blocks have barely touched it.

There's a second lesson there too, and it concerns the water on the brush.  Using the brush to put on lots of sweeping strikes sculpting the body doesn't work as well here as it does with the Inktense pencils.  There's so much pigment there that a big stroke just takes the pigment at the start of the stroke and paints it everywhere.  So if I do one big strike from a yellow area into a red area into a blue area into a brown area, I don't end up with every colour in the spectrum: I end up with one big yellow stroke.  Instead I need to dab little bits of water into lots of places, rinsing the brush out after each dab.  And maybe coax some of the dabs to mix if I can do this without just painting another colour over the top.  Even then, I end up with the odd white spot in places where the dabs haven't registered.  It's a challenging medium, this one.

After the body was finished, I added some background, continuing to experiment.  I lightly shaded some warm colours on the left and cool on the right to contrast against at the body.  And, rather than using a brush to wet the marks, I dabbed against them with a wet square of kitchen paper.  When the paper was dirty with warm colours, I dabbed a bit of these onto the cool side and vice versa.  It's a bit different I guess.  It might be interesting for landscapes, especially if I can use a kitchen towel dirty with brown paint to dab on water over yellow marks - it might look like sunlight through leaves.

Anyway, David's not going up for sale.  Working out how to use Artgraf blocks is like being a beginner all over again, churning out subprime junk works.

Michael, Hot And Cold

After a couple of days off I'm back in action today.  But with a family do on tomorrow, I don't want to start a coloured pencil portrait and have to take a big break in the middle.  So I've gone back to the inktense pencils for some figure drawing.  Let's see whether that has advanced as much as my marker drawings have.  Today's model is Michael and I think this is his third appearance.

The pencil drawing was pretty straightforward.  I used a grid but I'm starting to wonder whether I should just go freehand for figures.  It's not as if there are loads of different shapes or that getting a feature in slightly the wrong place will ruin the likeness.

Then I went on to colours.  I started with indigo, wanting a strong chiaroscuro base underlying everything.  Then I added in some other colours just for a bit of variety and temperature variation.  So there's Shiraz on the left and iris blue and teal green on the right.  Hot and cold.  Here's what I ended up with before adding any water:

Once this was all done, I added the water.  As usual, I started with a small brush in the most detailed areas before going larger.  I tried to paint from lighter areas into darker and to sculpt my strokes along body contours.  One thing I did today that I usually forget to do is to think about the edges of the shapes.  I deliberately have hard rather than soft edges for genuine edges of shapes (as opposed to form shadows on surfaces that are curbing away).  In particular, there's the shadow along the left side of Michael's right thigh: the left edge of the shadow is hard where we can see the edge of his torso but the right edge is soft where it's all about the curve along the thigh.

The final painting has ended up a bit more colourful than the indigo with subtle hints of temperature than I was expecting but still looks good.  The edges have generally worked well but there are places where I'd rather they were harder, like around the edge of Michael's left foot.  And his left firearm should probably be a bit thicker.  But there's a lot to like in so many other places with the brush marks and the temperature variations.  Michael's up for sale.

Now to see whether I can get away with posting this one on LinkedIn.

The YouTube Six

And here are the YouTube six in their full glory.  Somehow Lee's ugly arms and Liron's cartoony smile are no longer a problem.  These six guys just work really well together.

They’re up for sale as a set but if any of the six would like their individual portrait, I'll happily frame and send them out and then the remaining members if the team will only be up for sale individually.

A good few days work, hammering home to me the importance of shapes and value.  This can only benefit my coloured pencil and watercolour paintings.

Liron Yanconsky

Hey, what's up, it's the Artistic Actuary here.

After portraits of a music reactor, a mathy, a physicist, a chess nut boasting in an open foyer and a foodie, surely everyone out there knew that the final member if the YouTube six would be an artist?

This is Liron Yanconsky who has a great YouTube channel on watercolour painting.  There are some other art channels also worth mentioning here:

- Jean Lurssen's Watercolours where I learned everything I know about acrylic inks

- Steve Mitchell at The Mind Of Watercolour

- Liz Chaderton with her loose line and wash paintings

- Peter Cronin, master of the three layer approach

- The Art Gear Guide, which does exactly what it says on the tin

- and Teoh Yi Chie, an urban sketcher, although I only tend to check his channel for book reviews.

I picked Liron as my subject for this one, though, because he's the YouTuber I feel closest to.  He does lots of live videos where he interacts with his subscribers and, of course, he did recently critique some of my paintings recently.

After the MacMaster ended up much more colourful plan planned this morning, I decided that for Liron to complement the rest of the team he'd have to be done in brown.  I only have the one brown marker but I picked out a couple of my flesh tones that could work as lighter value browns.  As well as these, I used an ivory marker as I didn't want the wall in the background to just be white.

Other than that, I just followed the same technique as for the rest of the YouTubers.  A 5x7 grid, pencil guides down, rub out as much of the grid as possible while keeping the pencil outlines, then apply the markers, starting with the dark colours first.  The great thing about starting with those dark colours is that once they're down, all the pencil lines can be rubbed out.

Oh, and one of the things I've just realised about these six portraits is that I haven't drawn any pen or marker outlines around the shapes.  Whenever I've wanted an outline to be really clear, I've tried to put it in as a shape or, even better, as a negative shape .  And this seems completely natural.  I think I've left pen and marker outlines behind in these mini portraits.

But how was the painting?  I guess it's OK.  There's a likeness and the values have worked out with the brown palette but it feels a little bit cartoony.  It wasn't easy finding a photo of Liron without a toothless smile and that expression and the chubby cheeks do detract a bit from what's a decent likeness.  And the the hair on the head and the face both feel a bit lazy, adding to the cartooniness if anything.  Still, Liron's up for sale but if the man himself wants this it's his for free.

Lee Davey, The MacMaster

Now then my friends, I am in the Kent village of Hartlip and I'm here to show you the fifth in my collection of marker portraits if YouTube creators.  This is Lee Davey who, as The MacMaster has a YouTube channel where he reviews food joints in the U.K. and, occasionally the US or Benidorm.  Another food channel worth mentioning is Danny Malin's Rate My Takeaway, which is the sort of positive and entertaining experience that you need sometimes.  Lee's channel is the one I prefer out of the two: I just find him a bit more discerning when it comes to both his choice of outlets and the marks that he awards out of ten.

So I have a Lee Davey portrait here.  Before we go any further, take a closer look my friends.

The plan today was to make this another fairly monotone painting with black, red and pink as the main colours.  Maybe orange or yellow at a push.  I started with the black marker, putting in all the darkest shapes.  That went pretty well.  And I decided to use the purple marker to put in the shadow on the plate.  Controversial!  Does purple belong in an analogous red palette?  Let me know in the comments section below.

But then I went on to the reds and pinks and things started to fall apart.  It was the reds and pinks just don’t work on their own and I found I needed to bring in more colours.  So I added some yellows and oranges in the lightest places.  And used some greys to neutralise some of the more garish reds and pinks.  And I glazed over all the skin areas with a couple of different flesh tones.  But I wanted this to be more about the reds and pinks, so I also put in some complementary colours: the blue in the sky and the green in the t-shirt.

It all ended up a lot more colourful than the red and pink portrait that I'd planned and I may need to rethink the colour scheme for the final portrait in the collection.  Maybe that last one could just be in red, no other colours.  I'll have to think about that.

As for this one, the likeness isn't really there and the hands are an eyesore.  Sorry Lee.  This one's comfortably worst of the collection so far and won't be going in the shop window, although Lee can have it for free if he wants it.  And while it's not great in its own I think it fits in well with the rest of the collection and adds to the synergy.

And that's me done.  I'll see you guys in the next one.  Goodbye.

Antonio Radic, Agadmator's Chess Channel

 

Hello everyone.

Today I'm going to show you an amazing portrait that you're going to want to show to all your friends at the bar and library.  This is Antonio Radic, creator of Agadmator's Chess Channel on YouTube.  It's the best chess channel on YouTube.  There's one other that comes close but that I stopped watching that one after the creator started advertising Bitcoin on his channel.  I won't give him any publicity here.

I'm starting to think ahead to how my set of six portraits will work as a collection.  I already have one in greys, one in greens and one in blues.  One of the final two I have planned will be in reds and the other might be in lots of colours.  The colour in my set that was feeling underused was the purple, so I thought I'd use purple as a background in this one.  With no lighter purples around to create a purple monotone, I instead went for the greys again for the main portrait but deliberately stayed away from the black pen so that this one would look different to Hector from yesterday.

And now feel free to pause the post and win the game for the Artistic Actuary while I give you a couple of seconds.

…

…

So for those of you that were able to spot this brilliancy, congratulations.  And for those of you that want to enjoy the show, it is the b4 that I added on Antonio's lapel, always an excellent move and it was at this point that I stopped drawing as there was nothing more to be done here.  The likeness is again amazing.  The portrait looks as if it's been torn out if a newspaper and stuck down on a purple card. Antonio's up for sale but if the man himself wants it, I'm happy to send it out to Croatia for free.

So that was the portrait.  I hope you guys enjoyed it; thank you all.  I will see you all soon and have an excellent rest of your day.

Parth G

Hi there.  My name is The Artistic Actuary and today I'm going to show you the third of my collection of six YouTube content creators. We've had a music reactor and a mathematician.  What else am I into?  How about physics?

This is Parth G (full name unknown), creator of the Parth G channel on YouTube.  Judging from the content he creates I'm guessing his specialist area is particle physics and quantum mechanics.  I can't think of any subject anywhere that would be less easy to explain in simplified terms than this.  For anyone working in any scientific discipline that needs to explain stuff to the layman (so that includes actuaries), Parth should be an inspiration.  I don't know how he does it.  But, yeah, Parth is definitely my favourite YouTube physicist.

Continuing the theme of monotone chiaroscuro paintings, I went for green with this one today.  I used a light green, a dark green and a yellow.  Towards the end I added some highlights in places with a white gel pen.

And it came out looking amazing!  I'm particularly pleased that Parth's glasses came out looking reasonably OK - it would be so easy to end up with something asymmetrical in a face view like this.  The likenesses in this YouTube collection are just off the charts.  And I think that it's to do with me adopting a different mindset, looking for shapes rather than edges.  It's not as if my methodology has otherwise changed at all.

Parth's up for sale but the man himself can have it for free if he gets in contact.

Michael Penn

The second of my six YouTube subject areas is maths.  This is Michael Penn who does maths videos.  He seems to be a pure mathematician, into number theory and abstract algebra.  Not subjects that interested me at Uni but good for a brain workout on YouTube forty-odd years later.  And he does spread the maths around: he does plenty of videos on integration and on differential equations that are much more up my street.

I picked a side view of Michael's face as he has a very distinctive profile, with a touch of the Alexander Armstrongs to it.  I'm still enjoying drawing these in monotone but switched from the greys to the blues for this one.  I might have some more colourful portraits in the collection, but we'll see.  Michael's top was originally the same dark blue as the background with no visible edge but the portrait was looking too much like a stamp, so I brought in the black for his upper body.

Another success, this one.  I've caught Michael in one of those moments when he stops for a couple of seconds to take a breath.  This one's up for sale but is Michael's for free if he wants it.

And that feels like a good place to stop.

Mark Hector, Brain Squeeze Reactions

After reading the Bill Maughan book, I was keen to get started on some chiariscuro portraits but thought I'd start with markers rather than the coloured pencils.  Markers are a great medium for practising identifying shapes and values, so well suited to chiariscuro.  Paintings don’t take that long to do either, so there's not a big time investment in something that could end up going wrong.

The subject matter is something that popped into my head when I was out for one of my walks the other day.  The idea of drawing a collection of YouTube creators just appeared from nowhere and It's been in my head ever since.  Six is a good number for any collection, so I've identified my six favourite subjects for YouTube viewing and have picked out my favourite in each of those categories to be the subject of a portrait.

Anybody care to guess the six subjects?  Well let me get you started.  One of those subjects is music reaction videos.  There are lots of great music reactors out there but this guy is my current favourite.  It looks like his name is Mark Hector but everyone seems to call him Hector in the comments.  Hector's a hip hop fan and is broadening his outlook by checking out all sorts of other genres.  I'm far more closed to new ideas, only watching Hector's (or anyone else's) reaction videos when it's music that I know.  If someone's reacting to Comfortably Numb, Freebird or 2112, count me in!  Hector does swear a lot, so I wouldn’t recommend him to young kids but quite often this swearing comes at particularly good points in song.  One of the advantages of only watching reactions to songs that I know is that I can predict the exact moments when Hector's going to fall off his chair and shout “F*** OFF!" or "OH YOU DIRTY B******!" It's often when the vocals come in or the guitar solo starts.

Anyway, I caught Hector in one of those FO moments for a source photo and drew him in black and greys.    I'm pretty please with how he turned out.  It's the disgusted downturn at the corner of the mouth that just says everything.  He's up for sale if anyone's interested.  If you want this, Hector, I'll send it over for free.

And to close in Hector style, spread the love everybody and haters go f*** oneselves.  Five more YouTubers coming soon.

Artist Of The Year

I've submitted my entries for Landscape And Portrait Artist Of The Year.

The PAOTY deadline has been and gone and the judges are currently looking through them.  My entry went in a while ago and comprised:

- for the self portrait, my latest version

- for a second portrait, Moeen Ali, The Beard To Be Feared (this was before I painted David Suchet)

- for the optional third painting that doesn't have to be a portrait, Jos Buttler

The LAOTY deadline isn't for a while yet but I've just submitted my entry.  I could have waited a few more weeks in the hope of coming up with a better painting, but it makes for a less stressful life to get the submission in and forget about it.  I'm going with oil pastel paintings this year: something that might be different enough to catch the judges' eyes.  My full entry comprises:

- as my main painting, Steps Up From The Street, Hartlip

- as my second landscape, Two Trees, Hartlip House

- and as my optional third painting that didn't need to be a landscape, She wore A Yellow Ribbon

If I do get selected for one of these programs or make it back to LAOTY as a wildcard, I'll be told to keep it all under wraps, so don't expect to hear any news until the programs are close to airing.  Silence doesn't mean I've been chosen.

John Cleese

I had a premonition the other day.  Maybe it's all to do with new episodes of Fawlty Towers being created but I've convinced myself that John Cleese will be popping up as a guest sitter on Portrait an Artist Of The Year.  The judges are currently reviewing all the entries for PAOTY so might come visiting t his site.  If they do, I want them to see how I can make a half decent job of John.

After putting down a grid of squares and sketching in some shapes, my first step is to block out some shadows.  Both the darkest and the lightest shadows but with either more pressure or a second layer in the very dark set areas.  All of this is in monotone with some random dark colour - this time it was mauve.  Although this is very similar to the method described in Bill Maughan's book, it's a technique I came up with independently.  You can probably tell that I've not followed Bill's advice in this painting but that's because it was about 80% completed before I started reading Bill's book. My next coloured pencil portrait will have more of Bill's influence in it and should be interesting.

After that, a case of adding layer after layer of colour, randomly moving around the page rather than concentrating on one shape at a time.  The phone, the hair and the jacket are the places where I had most fun, adding so many different colours.  I didn't touch my black or sepia pencils while doing this one.  I was enjoying myself too much with all the other colours.  At one point the background didn't all hang together, feeling instead like a set of disparate shapes.  Buy two layers of colour (a grey and a light blue) over the whole background solves that problem.

Then we come on to the finishing touches.  I tried to do lots of close up work on the eyes because they're the most important area.  This included adding some tiny highlights to the irises and along the tear ducts (thanks Bill) using a putty eraser and some stencils.  I also dabbed out those round white highlights on the phone and slightly lightened the background in places where I wanted it to contrast with the dark shape of John's hair.  For the smoothing stage, I started with a colourless burnisher on the eyes, the phone and the most highlighted areas of the face because I wanted these to shine a bit; for the rest of the painting I smoothed things out with a paper stump.  In the smoothing I deliberately fuzzed all the edges (sgraffito style, thanks again Bill) everywhere except around the eyes where I wanted more focus.  I guess I could and maybe should have had hard edges in any cast shadows too.

"And that was me done."  That's going to become my catchphrase.  It's not a perfect likeness but good enough to go up for sale.  It's unmistakeably John but I can see elements of the bank manager from Mary Poppins in there.  The high spots for me are the tie and the back of the hand, although I also like the phone and the cord.  And obviously the sgraffito fuzziness is there as usual - it looks as if that's going to be a part of my style that I can never shake off.

The Artist's Complete Guide To Drawing The Head, William L. Maughan - Book Review

I only discovered this book on Amazon a couple of weeks ago and it didn't last on my wishlist for long.  The style of drawing that it describes is similar to that which I've been using for coloured pencils and I thought that this meant it might have lots of tips in it relating to that technique that might be directly applicable to my coloured pencil portraits.  So here goes.

It's a 160-page paperback with nice glossy, shiny pages.  Up to about page 120 it's all about drawing in chiaroscuro style.  That's in monochrome with a small number of distinct values, often just two but, in this book, it's four values.  These 120 pages make up five of the seven chapters in the book.  They're followed by a ten page chapter on drawing from multiple sources and a thirty page chapter on colour.

Those first five chapters are:

- an introduction, including materials

- the principles of chiaroscuro, including the two different types of shadow and the whole philosophy of drawing shapes rather than edges: contour drawing is out of the window

- some general points drawing the head, applying the chiaroscuro rules in the previous chapter but also discussing perspective, viewing angle and lighting

- more specific points on drawing the head, starting with the gesture drawing and the usual proportion rules for where to place features on the face but then going into lots of specific advice about drawing eyes, ears, mouth nose and hair in this chiaroscuro style

- a five step drawing process, along with four demonstrations

Let's talk about those first five chapters before going any further because they all hang together and the final two chapters feel like addons.  Those five chapters are off the charts.  The chiaroscuro method sounds so simple to use and obviously effective that I'm amazed this is the first time I've seen it covered in this sort of depth.  And it all hangs together so well.  In that second chapter, the author talks about the two types of shadow, form shadow and cast shadow, and gives some simple rules for how each type should be drawn differently.  It includes discussion of reflected light within shadows, something that was also covered in the James Gurney book.  And there's a big emphasis on marking in shapes as shapes and resisting the temptation to draw their outlines and colour them in.  But then these rules get referred back to time and time again in the rest of the book until they feel like second nature.  Oh, and everything here is illustrated with well labelled diagrams.

Then there's the chapter on specifics.  Eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hair.  It would be easy to repeat everything I've seen in other books about what shapes there are in these features.  You know, how the iris of the eye is elliptical rather than circular when not viewed straight on, that sort of thing.  But, no, here we're talking about drawing these features in chiaroscuro.  There's lots of specific advice that I've not seen before on exactly where the shadows and highlights are on those features.  See, we don't care about where the edges of of the features are, only where the edges of the shadows are, not that we'd ever draw the edges themselves.

Everything is just hanging together beautifully.  Even when we get to the demonstrations, I don't learn much but I do have all that earlier learning reinforced.  The demos are each four or five steps long and are worded as demonstrations and not as instructions, which suits me.

If we just stopped at this point, I'd be happy.  Anything else that was useful in the rest of the book would just be a bonus.  And, for me, there were no bonuses in the next ten pages.  They're about drawing from multiple sources, so we see things like portraits of women where the noses have been replaced by pig snouts and the ears by elephant ears.  This chapter just didn’t rock my boat.  As well as being of little interest to me and feeling a bit out of place compared to the rest of the book, I found it to be a bit light on content: if I wanted to do drawings like this, I'd be looking for another book to get some deeper advice.

And finally there are the last 30 pages on colour.  It took an experienced eye to be able to extract value from this chapter.  There was a lot of introductory medium-specific advice on using charcoal and dry pastels that was of little interest to me but that I can’t deny belongs in there.  There was some general colour theory stuff in there.  I found it interesting how split primary palettes (a warm and cool version of each of red, blue and yellow) were described as a set of six tertiary colours, something that has never crossed my mind before.  I found it weird how red was described as neither warm nor cool.  I took this with a pinch of salt, although it's something I'll think about while drawing portraits.  And then there was some more directly applicable stuff on where to vary colour temperatures in a painting, how to use analogous colour schemes (with and without complements) and choice of background colours.  There were definitely some bonus tips in this chapter.  After reading those last two chapters, it feels like the author has a couple more books in him on cut 'n' shuts and on painting with soft pastels, although neither of them would interest me at this point of my artistic career.

So it's time for the final assessment and here it is.  This book is a game changer.  It's well written, all based around simple principles, so accessible, but also full of useful advice that I don’t see in other places.  And everything is all viewed through a chiaroscuro lens.  It all sounds so easy and I can't wait to put it all into practice.  This one gets an easy five palettes.

🎨🎨🎨🎨🎨

Warren Haynes

I'm back to the coloured pencils today after a day off to check out potential garden art studios.  I just think I need a few more coloured pencil portraits waiting on this blog for the Portrait Artist Of The Year judges to see if they come looking.  Entries for PAOTY have now closed and I should find out in the next couple of weeks whether I've made it onto the program but don't expect to hear any news from me until just before the series starts - those are the rules.

For subject matter today, I picked Warren Haynes, guitarist and vocalist with Gov't Mule and, in the past, the Allman Brothers Band.  I doubt you've heard of him but he's a really talented guitarist: he'll definitely be in the Rolling Stone top 100.  I picked this pose for a number of reasons.  There's the opportunity to include hands and a guitar neck: the PAOTY judges like hands and I like guitar necks.  There are the lighting effects in the source photo, with Warren's hair lit up in green on one side and orange on the other.  And there's the pose/gesture: he's 100% immersed in the music.

I started as usual by putting down a pencil outline, cheating by using a 5x7 grid of squares.  I say cheating but there seem to be so many books out there suggesting to coloured pencil artists that they should use tracing paper or light boxes.  I'm nowhere near the extreme tail of the cheating spectrum.  Anyway, after the drawing was down and the grid rubbed out, there was what's fast becoming an important second step.  This is where I take a pointy tool and mark out white lines that I want to reserve on the paper.  Today I marked out the guitar strings, the frets and a few individual hairs around the extremes of Warren's mop.  

And then I added all the colour.  The usual story.  Multiple layers of colour, soft pressure whenever I remembered and tending to move all over the paper rather than finishing shapes one at a time.  I managed to complete the painting in a single session.  It took me five hours, which bodes well for PAOTY where I could work through the lunch hour as well as using my four allocated hours.  Or I could leave out the background or simplify my colour scheme, as I did for David Suchet.  Anyway, after all the colours were on I burnished all the flesh areas and smoothed over the rest.  And that was me done.

And how was the end result?  Well, I've not got a likeness of Warren, but I do think I've nailed the tone of his guitar.  It's there in the gesture and the chunky forearm.  And the marks I made for hairs, guitar strings and frets all did their job and add a certain something.  Finally, I know I keep talking about this Seawhites Of Brighton paper but just look at those halos around the big shapes, especially those around Warren's hair.  They're not something I added consciously: I think it's something this paper makes me do.  Anyway, matching the guitar tone isn't enough: without achieving a likeness, this painting isn't going in the shop window.

For a better likeness of Warren, check out The Allman Brothers Band: Warren's third from the right.