Skip to main content

Edwards Merrill

36" x 24", oil on canvas, 2018, private collection.

When I was first approached by the new owner of the Merrill Inn (now called Merrill House) to do a portrait of Edwards Merrill, original owner of the house, I thought it might be a fun challenge...only slightly daunted by the fact that there were hardly any images of the man (I only came across two different pictures, both of which looked kind of weird and didn't have much detail).

My approach was to capture Merrill's likeness as well as I could in a formal composition inspired by the portraits of John Singer Sargent, include some romantic/moody atmospheric effects inspired by the illustration work of Bernie Fuchs, and have some contemporary elements (all the red bits) because I am me (and I seem to paint and compose in a certain idiosyncratic way that's as much intuitive now as it is deeply considered).

Eyes detail.

It took a lot of back and forth effort over several weeks to get this kind of atmospheric haziness just right because I'm new to glazing with oils (yet immensely familiar with glazing in watercolours, so that prior experience helped a bit). There were many periods when I thought this whole thing was going badly and that I should give it up...but something told me that if I just kept going, I'd get to a point that satisfied me, my standards, and what I felt this portrait deserved. This doubt is quite normal when going outside of your comfort zone, however slightly.

I'm not sure where the idea of the red rectangle came from, but I couldn't really shake it from any of my preliminary composition sketches. However, that dramatic shape works as an anchor to a triangular composition within the overall painting (made up of the three flat red elements, leading down to the tiny house), in the middle of which is Merrill's melancholy face.

Collar detail.

I added the tabbed collar to reference Merrill's time as a judge...and these serve to lead your eye back up to his face after having been directed from the red rectangle up top, down to his red signature across his neck (symbolizing his alleged suicide by hanging), directed down further by the point created by his dark waistcoat and white shirt, down to the tiny red Merrill House at the bottom, his lasting legacy and where this portrait currently resides.

Merrill House detail.

In the end, I'm extremely happy with this portrait as I feel it suits the story of Edwards Merrill, has some contemporary elements which I bring to the table, and is, overall, quite haunting without being too creepy (a little creepy is okay).





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing  Beverly Hills Cop  on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his  Saturday Night Live  days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining.  Beverly Hi...
7 comments
Read more

Time Travel Helmet

The theme for this year's Firelight Lantern Festival is The Time Machine , and Krista and I were going to put together steampunk-inspired costumes for ourselves (which is why the helmet's painted in hammered bronze), but, after shooting the announcement video (second video at the bottom of this post) I decided I'd look better with a lab coat, bow tie, and goggles for a generic 20th Century scientist look. I'd previously built a jetpack as sci-fi costume accessory for stiltwalking purposes back in 2015, so if I were to combine this helmet, the jetpack, and my refurbished blaster and I'd have a pretty good, mostly homemade, sci-fi costume for...something...down the line... Creature! It sorta looks like a weird electronic sea cucumber or sea anemone from the top. More dieselpunk than steampunk; I like it. They were originally crystal clear plastic, but I sanded the insides and outsides to better disperse the light from the LEDs (which I bought, pre-wired...
Post a Comment
Read more

YT-1300 Freighter w/Cargo Carriage (scale model), Part 1

For a couple of decades, now, I'd been curious about two things concerning the Millennium Falcon: what it looked like as a brand new, unmodified ship ...and how exactly did it work as a "freighter," anyway? That other build takes care of my curiosity about the ship, this one takes care of my curiosity about the freighter question... Hail, Bandai. Bandai Star Wars kits are amazing. Their larger models are super detailed, but even these tiny kits (the Falcon here is about 1/350 scale) are superior to many previous and current Star Wars kits by MPC, AMT, or Revell. Mini sprue tour. Interestingly, this version of the Falcon is the one from Star Wars , having only three landing gear boxes (two more were added to the front for Empire ), but the larger version I built as factory stock had five because it was the version from The Force Awakens . My only (very minor) complaint is that these smaller kits only have stickers instead of decals (the larger kits...
1 comment
Read more