Valentino Rossi painting – Day 2
Here’s a reminder of where I got up to yesterday with this painting.
Today I concentrated on trying to improve the underlying tonal design and making sure I have described the forms correctly, by which I mean all the areas in shadow are darker than any of the areas in the light, regardless of their local colour.
I’m clarifying the shape of the fairing at the front of the bike and I had to correct where I had placed the rear wheel and his left elbow – it’s amazing how often you come back to a painting after putting it away for the night and find glaring mistakes in the basic job of getting stuff in the right place. I keep making the mistake of making quick preparatory sketches that are only meant to serve the purpose of figuring out design problems, and then relying too much on the sketch as reference for the final painting. The mistakes of object placement in the sketches become amplified in the painting. Maybe I need to make more careful studies before launching like a mad thing into the painting.
There is no sense of depth to the background yet. The aerial perspective is not strong enough at the moment (in this case that means fading the background to white as I move up the canvas) and I haven’t put those other two bikes in the background yet. The lack of a background is one of the things that make the painting look a bit rubbish at the moment, I have to ignore this and have confidence that my plan is a good one and that things will work out in the end.
The form of the bike and rider is starting to come together now. Again I’m refining the forms with a slightly smaller brush, but still paying attention to using expressive brush strokes and blending the subject into the background in places. I don’t want it to have a cardboard cut-out look. This approach is really about making lots of sweeping gestural brush strokes that combine together to create a vibrant impression. I have found if you paint with small brush strokes with your nose up against the canvas you can get an anatomically correct painting but the result is a bit boring and lifeless. If you paint assertively you can create something magical, filled with effects that you didn’t intend to happen.
There’s still lots of work I must do on the details, which are the things that will attract the eye. However it’s important to take ones time and get the structure right first.
I’ve now lightened up the background considerably, I hope you can see that in the photo. I had to use thicker paint to do it, I hope that won’t cause me trouble when it comes to putting in the bikes and the road in the top left. If worst comes to worst I might have to let the white paint dry for a few days before painting over the top.
There weren’t any dramatic changes in the painting today but I managed to tidy some things up and improve it, and most importantly I had fun. Now I’m done for the day let’s take a look at the structure in greyscale and black and white to check the forms.
That looks a bit better than before, there’s less mid-tone grey and a definite shape-welded dark form that stretches from the bottom right across the kerb and into the shadow side of the bike. That dark form has some interesting irregular holes cut out of it, underneath the bike and the reflection in his visor for example. It’s this shape that will grab your eye from across the room even in full colour.
You can maybe see what I mean a bit better if I use my photo editing software to reduce it to three tones. I might need to reduce the greys even more, and hopefully in the end the bikes in the background will make an interesting tonal shape in the top left. I’m looking forward to getting back to this tomorrow, but it will probably be a late night session under the lights.
