Valentino Rossi – Day 5
The nice thing about an opaque medium like oil paints is that you can scrape back and repaint an area if you aren’t happy with it. I’ve done that here with Vale’s helmet. I’m still not entirely over the moon with it, but it looks better than it did before. Those black lines are especially tricky to execute gracefully, I will probably end up coming back to them before I’m finished.
I’ve also started cutting out the letters for the sponsors’ names on the fairing. Doing lettering for something small or in the middle distance is not easy. If you paint each individual letter it looks over-detailed for its place in the picture. I find the best way is to start with a solid block for the whole name, in this case a white rectangle on a blue background. Make sure that you add some lighting effects on the block before you cut out the letters, for instance vary the tone of white across the block to suggest a reflective surface. Then cut out around the edges of the letters and paint in the holes in the Os and Ds in blue. There’s no need to separate out every single letter. Allow some of them to remain merged together and it looks more convincing. It’s the same when drawing someone’s smile, there’s no need to outline each individual tooth – a solid block of teeth with a hint of shaping around the gums looks better.
I’ve done some more work on the front wheel. You can see I’ve allowed part of the light side of the tyre to merge with the road behind it, there is no outline to the tyre. This is called a lost edge. Varying between lost edges and found edges is really important avoiding a cardboard cut-out look, in other words making the subject look like it’s part of the scene and not just stuck on top. If you please to follow around the outline of the bike and rider you’ll see that the contour sometimes fades into the background and sometimes stands out from the background dark on light or light on dark, like a silhouette. The upper part of the tyre has a darker piece of bodywork behind it to define the curve of the tyre. Your mind, which knows what tyres look like, infers the shape of the lower part of the tyre where the edge has been lost. Going clockwise around the bike, the fairing and right handlebar stand out from the infield but the white stripe on the fairing is lost against the background, and I’ve emphasised this by making the background much whiter at that point. The rider’s back and helmet alternately stand out and fade into the background. His left upper arm definitely stands out against the road. There’s a white stripe on the underside of his lower arm that’s lost against the background. And so on. This variation is all deliberate. Note also how the white kerb underneath his elbow fades into the tarmac, and part of the white line on the opposite side of the track is smudged into the road.
As you can see, I’ve also redefined one of the bikes in the background now, it’s a Repsol Honda possibly of Marc Marquez. The third bike needs a bit more work yet. Shall we make that one Jorge Lorenzo? Note I’m suggesting from the angle of the wall at the back that Lorenzo has been heading downhill into that corner. Does that look like a building in the far distance to you? Maybe I’ll try to turn it into one tomorrow.
Finally, I’ve worked on Valentino’s shadow a bit. I realised today that his shadow had straight edges before as though it was being cast by a rectangular block, not by a bike with sticky-out wheels. Also, the edges of the shadow could be sharper close to the object that is casting it, and more blurred further away. The name for the blurry area is a penumbra and it occurs when a hazy sky scatters the sun’s light slightly. Anyway I think it helps the eye to read the picture on this occasion and it looks quite nice.
I’m not sure how much work is left to do on this painting. Maybe one more session? Or maybe I’ll be playing about with it for ages yet. I want to get it finished though because I’ve thought an idea for my next painting…
