Happy Belated New Year

First post of the year and I resolve not to make any ridiculous resolutions like promising to post more. I know I'm a blog slacker and might even take a little pride in that.

Last year I got into a show on Bravo called "Star Portraits". For those unfamiliar with the show, it is a Canadian show where three portrait artists are asked to paint a Canadian celebrity. They have no prior knowledge as to whom they are going to paint, are given a two hour sitting with the subject and then 15 minutes at the end for photographs. The artists then have two weeks to return to their studios and paint the portrait. At the end of two weeks the subject gets to pick a portrait to keep and the other two are auctioned off for a charity of the celebrities choice.

It is always surprising to see the different interpretations of the sitters, who range from athletes like Theoren Fleury, entertainers such as Mary Walsh and environmentalists like Dr. David Suzuki. I am sometimes surprised to see which portrait they choose but sometimes I think the choice would be really difficult.

This show inspired me to undertake portraiture like the Blue Dean and more recently, my girlfriends brother in law, the notorious N8 DOGG.

What follows are photos of my progress.


This is one of the early studies I did from photographs.


Here is the transfer of the final lined drawing on the canvas with an indication of the highlights. Not sure what I was doing with the highlights really.


At this stage I was just building up the values of the shadows before working up the colours.


I didn't like the way the nose was going and gave him a bit of a haircut. In retrospect, I kinda wish I'd left the hair a little longer.


Voila, the final. I was pretty happy with the outcome of this portrait. I feel it captures the cocksure attitude of the subject in a humorous manner. It was a total surprise to N8 and most importantly he liked it. Although he said it kind of looked like Yogurt from Spaceballs.