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...
6 comments
Read more

Small Pond Arts Puppet Wagon (1/24 scale model)

I dreamed up the Small Pond Shipyard for my fanciful scratch-built sci-fi airship creations (which still only exist in sketch/Photoshop mock-up form (and boxes in my closet) for now), but more and more ideas kept coming ( this wind turbine , for example, will be part of a rather elaborate diorama I'll be working on this winter). But the Puppet Wagon was a sleeper surprise, to be sure. [Really, though, I don't know why I was so eager to build this right away since I was planning to slowly develop my modelling skills with simpler builds first and the work my way up to more complicated projects.] Not all parts were used/needed. Most of these ideas have come from watching modelling videos online, and when I saw a review of this sweet little Japanese "Ramen Shop" food truck by Aoshima (right-side drive!), my brain started making jokes about customizing it to the weird food truck ideas I'd been posting on Facebook. But the more I thought about what the co...
2 comments
Read more

City of Angels

17" x 11", watercolour and digital, 1999 Ah, City of Angels . I thought I was getting cool film noir but got a cheesy musical instead (Google it if you must). Still, it was fun to make the poster and associated images, mostly because the research consisted of watching real films noir and buying a great book on movie posters of the genre. I made tons of sketches and a few digital mock-ups. For the final poster above, I made three separate watercolour paintings (one of the couple and one each of the two black and white heads) and composited them in Photoshop, where I also added the text. In true movie poster fashion, I wanted the actors names to be the top two names, but I lost that battle and had to use the characters' names instead. It looks fine, but it implies that "Kingsley and Stone" are the lead actors in the show. Oh, well...it's only community theatre... By making the "angel" above half black and white and half colour, th...
Post a Comment
Read more