Portrait of Jon Snow: Game of Thrones Fan Art

Winter sure is taking a long time to get here!

OK...I could easily fill a whole post with Game of Thrones quotes...but let's get right to my obsession with painting the characters, ok?  I have to get back into the studio!

Right from the start - like most other Game of Thrones fans - I loved Kit Harington's portrayal of Jon Snow.  I've never read the books, so I didn't come to the TV series with any pre-conceived notions of who he should be, so I guess in that way I was lucky.  Anyway - Kit Harington, obviously, is a very good looking man, and combined with the cinematography and costumes and his amazing acting I had no choice - had to paint a portrait of Jon Snow!

So just the other day I was lucky enough to get my hands on a tube of Torrit Grey - the color that Gamblin Oil Paints releases every year in honor of Earth day.  It is created from all of the dust particles trapped in their filters over the course of the last production year.  Anyway...it turns out to be a perfect foil to one of my painting characteristics:  I love color.  Maybe a little too much at times.  I am always trying to "tone down" my skin tones.  So...I found a Jon Snow screenshot that I liked, him in a cool green forest with an overall atmosphere of grey-ish green, and got out my usual palette.

However, this time, every color I mixed - from the black of his hair to the green of the trees to the flesh on his cheeks - had a touch of Torrit grey mixed in.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  Now I am not the first artist to do this - having a pile of color that an artist mixes into each color on his painting is sometimes referred to as "the mother".  An artist will add a touch of this to every color she mixes, to unify the palette.  Often times this is a light purple, like a periwinkle, sometimes a combination of alizarin crimson, white, and blue (french Ultramarine would work)

Once I knew the reference photo I wanted, the color approach I wanted, I got to work, starting with transparent red oxide on 11" x 14" gessoed panel.

I spent a lot of time on subtle tweaks to every angle on the face - a slight change in the arc of the eyebrow changed the expression from fear to steadfast, a crinkle in the corner of the eye from thoughtfulness to rage, the line of the lips changed from tense to confident.  It's amazing what subtle changes can do to an expression.  And I am so in awe of what this amazing actor captures in just a glance, I wanted to be sure to honor that in every stroke.

I've also painted Tywin Lanister, Master Luwin, and Lady Stark (I will share her portrait soon!)

Portrait Painting of Lord Tywin Lannister, Actor Charles Dance - Game of Thrones Fan Art

As explained in my previous post about my portrait of Maester Luwin, I am obsessed with the Game of Thrones series, not just because of the amazing actors, but the brilliant cinematography.  I pretty much want to paint every scene!

So here is Charles Dance, who plays Lord Tywin Lannister, as he stares down his son Tyrion.  Spoiler alert!!!  OK this has already aired, so you probably know...this is the scene where Tyrion is looking at his father over a crossbow, as his father perches in a most humiliating spot, on the privy in the middle of the night.  Never flinching, his stoic gaze remains fixed, firm, and confident. And while all this brilliant acting is going on, I am saying to myself "look at that pretty light on the side of his face!" and I have to paint it.

Of course, poor guy, many people still look at this portrait and say "Hey!  It's that guy from "The Golden Child!"

Inspired By Game of Thrones - Portrait Practice - Master Luwin played by Donald Sumpter

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.

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".