Evolution of a Portrait
Painting a portrait of one of my favorite characters is a love/hate exercise. Invariably I hate the image at first because, well, it’s not finished and I want it to be. I see all the things that are wrong with it and need correcting. Then, at some point, there’s a moment where it all sort of clicks and it actually looks like the person I’m painting. When that happens I love it. I take it off the easel and bring it into my living room where I stare at it for hours. Wow, did I do that? Yes I did.
Despite all that, I go through basically the same steps for each painting. I start with an image I want to recreate and overlay a grid on it. I’ll then add a grid to my canvas and draw on the canvas using the image as a guide. The grid lines help me keep things on track and in the right places.
After the grid and drawing I’ll go over my pencil drawing with burnt umber. Aside from the outlines of the figure I’ll sketch in the shadow areas so I know where they’re suppose to go. At this point I’ve got a fairly good likeness, but I’m always refining things until it’s right.
After this step I’ll tone my canvas so that I’m not painting on all white and so I can tell which tones I should use later. Having an all white canvas can play tricks on the eyes so I tone it. I usually use a blue wash for the toning. Some artists use browns but someone once suggested using blue so that the blue tones that really are in the skin can permeate through the later layers giving the skin a more realistic look and that’s what I do now.
Once that’s dry I’ll start working on the face and skin colors. For Vic Morrow, I worked on the face first and also the helmet and uniform. I want to get these right before working on the background. I’ll add some shadows around the face so that I keep my tones correct.
Sometimes I just get frustrated with a certain area–it either isn’t working or I’m struggling–and I move to another area. That happened with this painting and I started working on Vic’s Thompson machine gun before having completed his face and jacket. The fuel barrel and background were fairly easy and didn’t take too long.
Being a big fan of Combat! and Vic Morrow, I loved that it looked so much like him when finished. I worked through the hate part and now I can look at it with love. I hope you will too!
