Purdey

I wanted to give some of my new inktense pencils a runout, so that's what I'm going today.  And with three of those new colours being fleshy looking reds, I thought I'd have a go at a portrait.  I have a big stash of photos that I want to turn into portraits but most of them have been deliberately picked out because they look idea for watercolours.  I ended up picking out a photo of Purdey, from The New Avengers, played by Dame Joanna Lumley.  It was a portrait that suited pretty well my medium.

It wouldn't have worked trying out all my new colours in the same painting, so I only gave debuts today to the three new reds.  I started with sea blue in all the darkest areas before moving on to Persian red, wild flame and paprika, which I put over the medium tones, being mindful of how the Persian was the darkest of the three and paprika the lightest.  I also put Persian red over all the blue in those dark areas, looking for some violet tones and some sort of red unification.  Before wetting the colours, I added some indigo in the darkest of the dark areas.

And then I wet all the marks, starting with my smallest brush in the most detailed areas.  In the hair I was especially careful to follow the direction of the hairs and to leave a big white highlighted band.

Once everything was dry, I rubbed out all my initial pencil lines.  I might have said in the past that wetting the marks was the best thing about using inktense pencils but I'm thinking now that rubbing out all the pencil marks must come a pretty close second.  I can’t do this with any other medium and all the edges look great afterwards, whether lost or found.

After my Roger Moore nightmares, I'm really pleased to see the likeness shining through in this one.  I also think the colour scheme works well and that my decision to throw in some indigo was a good one.  Purdey's up for sale.