The Naked Silo

In Part One of my look back at my 25 years of painting, I talked a bit about Jon J Muth, Kent Williams, and Bill Sienkiewicz, the three key artists who inspired me so strongly that I absolutely needed to paint in watercolours as a direct result of seeing some of their work in the medium. Because I saw their work exclusively in comics, there was naturally a lot of figurative and portrait-like content for me to consume, and I loved the way they all handled skin tones/textures a little differently from each other. In my last two years of high school, however, I was lucky enough to have a good teacher for once, Anthony J. Batten , who worked primarily in watercolours, and became another major inspiration for me. Admittedly, my approach to learning how to paint people wasn't very effective since all I did was look at my photo reference (from magazines, what else? I hadn't started shooting my own reference yet) and try to paint what I saw. The results were okay, but I would...

Michelle Pfeiffer 14" x 11", watercolour, 1988, private collection At some point in the winter of 1988 I decided to challenge myself by painting a portrait. After completing my first three, largely abstract, explorations into watercolour ( this , this , and this ), I thought something more recognizable would be fun to try. I don't remember why I chose Michelle Pfeiffer for it because, then, as now, I think she's a fine actor, but I feel kind of indifferent about her. Maybe it was Tony's suggestion... You'll notice first that the likeness is barely there, if at all. The hair is all over the place (I deliberately exaggerated what I saw in the photo). The skin colouration is weird, but I do like the transparent glazing effect evident all over her --something I remember not being able to replicate in the next few paintings I did. This is obviously student-level work (I was, after all, just 17 when I painted this). A couple of years ago, I thought I...