I finally let reality take over and sent this artwork to Deviant Art's Dark Shadows Contest. I'd done the sketch below it as a study for Johnny Depp's face, but I could not, no matter what I tried, make it translate into acrylic on canvas. No life in the final product, at all. Colors all wrong. It looked more like a portrait by Grandma Moses than something you'd see hanging in the Smithsonian in Washington DC. So I scanned it into PhotoShop and colored it in then rendered it in palette knife and that was that.
At least it wasn't for lack of trying. That canvas now has enough paint on it to stand being lacquered and used as a table-top. And one of my new understandings about myself is, I don't like doing Sargent-style portraiture. I mean, I love John Singer Sargent's work, but I don't like replicating it. The few portraits I've done have been more modernist-impressionistic pieces, and that would have been wrong for this contest and what I was aiming for.
Oh, well...once I'm over my irritation with myself, I might do one like that of Johnny and his library. The books were turning out good, and I liked the darker colors of the piece.
Now back to IF and completion of this project.
2 comments:
I think that's a pretty good likeness and I appreciate your choice of wardrobe and hairstyle.
I'd like to see the pre-Photoshop version of this painting.
Thanks. The sketch is what I scanned into Photoshop.
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