The Nightmare!!!, Oil on Board, 10" x 8", 2013

THE NIGHTMARE!!!, Oil on Board, 10" x 8", 2013

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This is another transformation that I really enjoyed! I took some liberties here and made a lot of creative and imaginative additions to suit the title I decided to give the painting.



The actual sketch had nothing to do with a nightmare, it was actually of a lady who sat in front of me while traveling to York recently. She was awake for most the journey, enjoying her book, snacks and an occasional phone call. She seemed to me a delightful person!

But I kept getting absorbed by her features and how she would look great if I got the opportunity to pull out my sketchbook and make a quick sketch of her.

Then all of a sudden some few minutes before getting to York, she slept off! Ahah!! I got my sketching stuff out and did a "Quckie", once I finished it was just about the time when the train got to York. I tapped her and showed her the sketch, she just said, "thank you for that!".

We both departed happy souls! There's never a dull day for me when I get to show the commuters I sketch everyday, the sketch that I have done of them.

Lest I forget the transformation was done completely from imagination and the original sketch.  The original sketch was done with a BIC black ball point pen with a N75 TOMBOW Dual Brush Marker.

How I went about it.

1. I used only 4 colours for this painting. The Anders Zorn palette, which consists of Titanium White, Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre and Ivory Black. 
2. I worked on an MDF board, 10" x 8"-I gave it a wash of Yellow Ochre and White in acrylics to remove the white glare of the primer.
3. I stared by sketching it all out with a wash of red and black.
4. I made sure I started with lean colour mixtures, these are mixtures that have less paint and more turps.
5. I was careful to make sure that I painted the shadow shapes on her face first before adding the lights with thicker mixtures.
6. Some people ask me how I manage to get the skin tones. Well, basically I just work out what I think I'd be mixing if I was looking at her in real life, I always observe colour temperature and tones on people I sketch and even without making notes I just remember what the closest mixture to it would look like. Remember these sketches are not about accuracy but they are a good challenge to see how well we can combine observation with intuition, which I think is valuable for the development of all representational painters.
7. Once satisfied with the face I added the glasses and then went for the background. I just went crazy with the background because I didn't have much information in the sketch to take it much further.
8. Then finally I added some really gestural and organic strokes to add to the mystery of the piece.

The sketch for nightmare- there's nothing like the original sketch! but it's always good to see how far we can push our sketches and take them further. Just start from somewhere and see what progress you'll make!