Lewis Hamilton – Day 3
I’m making great progress with this painting today. I scraped back the yellow helmet and restated it, that’s an advantage of painting in oils.
I’m pretty confident at this stage that things are in the right place and the plan to stick to three values is working out, I can now think more about refining some of the forms and adding in details. I want to add details as freely as possible without being fussy. It’s important to state the edges of forms like the front wings but if you can do this with economy and a flick of the wrist the overall effect is more charming.
It’s time to get the trees in the background into shape. I noticed in one of my reference photos there is some kind of marquee between the trees and the retaining wall. I’ve left that triangular shape in for now, it might be a worthwhile detail later on. I’m intending to indicate the high chain-link fence on that side of the road, but it’s easy to overstate a finicky thing like that so I’m playing it cool for now. The trees need to be finished first anyway.
On the other side of the road I’ve tidied up the contours of the fence. That mid-tone shadow hanging in the air is going to be the underside of the top of the fence where it overhangs the road. I’m glad now that I left the distant background as the raw undercoat, it would have been difficult to get back to that high tone white if I’d covered the canvas in a mid-tone at the start. Don’t forget, the skyscrapers in the distance are going to be dropped in there, that will require white paint with just a smidge of colour to stay within the designated tone in my scheme.
The white decal on the rear wing proved to be difficult to lay down at this stage, the white paint doesn’t go down cleanly wet in wet on the red I laid down earlier. Probably I should have planned that a bit better. I’ve also added a white line in the foreground which helps to give the impression of recession, and a shadow across the road that I’m careful to overlap the white line. I’m not sure I got the perspective of the white line perfect, I’ll have a think about that.
Now though it’s time for a bit of bling. The grooves in the tyres are not much more than a black line and a light grey line laid side by side. That’s enough to tell your brain that it’s a groove with a shadow edge and a highlighted edge. I’ve started adding edges and slots to the complicated front wings on this car, but again I’m being as free as I can with these. I’m fussing about with the placement of the airbox again, not sure if it’s quite right yet.
I’m happy with it so far. More bling tomorrow.
