Tuesday, May 12, 2015

An Intensely Lovely Couple

‘Angie and Rob’ 50"x40” Oil on canvas
A painting of my studio-mate Angie and her husband Rob, trying to particularly focus on their relationship as a pair of extremely creative individuals. Angie is a painter who mostly concentrates on popular television culture and the “off-kilter” fervour of its obsessed fans, while Rob is a musician.

I’ve intentionally (or at least attempted to) put a psychological spin into this painting. So there are aspects of the sitters’ relationship that I have tried to suggest. Such details as the way they grip and cling to each other - tightly clasping each other’s shoulders so that their fingers press into the flesh, as well as their expressions.

The painting was done in a traditional portrait pattern - ‘Half-length’ canvases being typically of a single sitter in either a thigh-length standing or ankle-length seated pose. However, I’ve deliberately crammed them into the format.

The picture started out as a charcoal drawing, which was then toned with an umber “soup” and “wiped-out” to define the forms and tonal values. On top of this brown “dead-colour” underpainting, glazes and thicker applications of paint were increasingly added to build up the final image. Having said that, some areas were painted more directly than others using various ‘Alla Prima’ techniques. However I pretty much stuck to this process of painting throughout the work.