Someone who shall remain nameless got me sucked into Game of Thrones. So for the last three months I chain watched episodes and caught up to season 4. I was one of - apparently - 8 million people who turned in on Sunday night to start Season 5.
From the very first scene in the series, I was enamored of the lighting and the costumes. I am horrible with names, my attention span isn't what it used to be, and darn it! I have to stay caught up in my Words with Friends Games! But all the world stops when I watch GoT.
So far I have done three portraits, and I'll share this one first - Maester Luwin from Winterfell, played by Donald Sumpter.
One of the aspects I am working on in my paintings is my tendency to paint very "hot" - too much red and orange in my skin tones (we can debate if that's a good or bad thing later...I just want to try and paint in a cooler palette, experiment with the color) So I loved the color of Maester Lewin, especially in this scene where he is teaching Bran about Westeros in the episode "The Wolf and the Lion".
I started with very cool, dark, transparent colors to block in the face.
From the very first scene in the series, I was enamored of the lighting and the costumes. I am horrible with names, my attention span isn't what it used to be, and darn it! I have to stay caught up in my Words with Friends Games! But all the world stops when I watch GoT.
So far I have done three portraits, and I'll share this one first - Maester Luwin from Winterfell, played by Donald Sumpter.
One of the aspects I am working on in my paintings is my tendency to paint very "hot" - too much red and orange in my skin tones (we can debate if that's a good or bad thing later...I just want to try and paint in a cooler palette, experiment with the color) So I loved the color of Maester Lewin, especially in this scene where he is teaching Bran about Westeros in the episode "The Wolf and the Lion".
I started with very cool, dark, transparent colors to block in the face.
I then started to block in some of the flesh on the face. I realized - when taking photos - that my camera (ok iphone) tends to make everything look warmer - more red - than in "real life". So that could be one of my problems - when painting from photographs the reds are too strong.
Anyway, I purposefully only used cool colors on my palette - the "warmest" color was transparent red oxide.
Because the scene was filmed in an outdoor cool light, the flesh had a cool feeling, very icy blue, everywhere except his ear. That is the only spot I used any cadmium orange and red. It was a nice contrast to the predominantly cool painting.
I took great care to try and capture what Mr. Sumpter brought to the role of Maester Luwin - the incredible warmth partnered with deep wisdom. I have incredible respect for these marvelous actors, and everyone on the Game of Thrones team...they are all artists.
The painting is done on an oil primed linen, that had a previous life as another painting, and was then recovered with oil based primer. I intentionally leave some texture along the edges, a little peak of the history of the surface. This portrait is 11" x 14".
1 comment:
This is awesome
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