2a. Starting Michael Pellecchia

A couple of years ago, Michael Pellecchia posted this photo of himself playing at an art opening in New York. Michael and I go back to the late 70's, when we worked together at Fort Worth ad agency, Jerre R. Todd & Assoc.

I asked him if I could use it as reference to paint his portrait. He loved the idea. 

I started painting it soon afterwards, and then got caught up in other works and had to put it aside. I shipped it with our household goods to Costa Rica and now will finish it here. Its a nice break from just having completed the eight footer.

Michael sent me several photos from that evening. I liked the composition of this one with more floor and windows showing.

But, I thought Michael looked better in this one:

This one was sharper and I liked how his head was cocked to the left while he played.

So, I decided to combine them. I did that as I traced and transferred the image to my 16 x 20 canvas, a small size for me, but large enough for this piece.

Here is how my canvas looked this morning when I pulled it out of the shipping box. While my large painting dries in the background, I got out my standard easel and my laptop and was ready to continue this piece. 

I had roughed in most of the background already (the boring part), so this should be fun!

As I like to do, I started on the upper left portion of the canvas. In this case, the windows.

Here are the windows with my underpaint dry and ready for the next step. I am working back to front, so I started painting the sky and city scape first. There are also some interesting color reflections on the windows that I like. They may have come from the camera, but I don't care. I like them.....so, their in!

Now, I have to put the metal security bars over this background. You can see that I left the drawing of the window parts in as I painting the background. They are not perfect, but enough for me to see where things will go.

First I made parallel, diagonal lines across one window, trying to keep them about the same distance apart. I mixed a neutral grey from my palette below:

I continue doing the cross hatching until I cover all the windows. I like to turn my canvas upside down or sideways to make my brush strokes as easy for me to make as possible.

This takes some concentration and a steady hand, not right after you have had several cups of coffee. If it ain't working at the moment, you just have to stop and come back to it later. 

I don't worry too much when my brush stroke isn't perfect. Sometimes they get a little wider or narrower than the others. I will come back later after it is all dry and do a little touch up.

Once the grid is done, I move on to putting the window mullions in.

These take long steady brush strokes too. As I do this, I also start painting in the wood of the windows.

They are starting to look like windows now. I keep this going until one side is done. Here's the comparison.

On the left is a completed window. Now, on to the right side.

Okay, both windows are done now. At least the basics. I will continue to go back and add more detail and fix things I don't like.

Now, I think I will tackle Michael's image. I want to get some base paint on him. Then, after that is dry I can come back in for more work on him. Here is a closeup of where I am starting from. Just some pencil indicating basic shapes and the background painted right up to his edge. Note that I haven't been that particular about getting paint on him.

So, with a palette that includes some flesh tones, I started his face and sweater. As usual, I worked from the left corner of his head, starting with his silver hair and adding in flesh tones as I went down.

I roughed in his face by going back and forth with light and dark shades until I felt like I was in the general vicinity of where his facial features should be. On his sweater, I just used some deep shades of violet after I put in the white highlights on this shoulders and arm.

Next, I put in dark shadows on the sweater and started the light blue highlights on his jeans. You can see here that I have yet to put in the black shadows on the right side of his sweater.

I added in darker blues and black to complete the jeans, making sure I paid close attention to the folds of the jeans. I had to lighten the original photo to see where these shapes were.

I decided at this point that I wanted to see how I could handle the instrument stand to his right. I know it would be better to wait until I had completed the background behind it, but I just had to do it. There is nothing that I can't fix if I screw up!

Here's the stand ready for paint.

Now, here's the stand after I put on the first coat of paint.

I've gotten most of the parts right and started the top of the actual instrument as well. I will do the instrument after I tighten up the background. The stand was enough at this point.

Now, back to the background. I think I will work on the bricks first.

The bricks are about the width of my number two flat brush, or at least they are now...

I had painted some underpaint that was dry now. When I lightened the photo, I could see the bricks better. They go partially up the wall before plaster takes over. The bricks have a lot of other colors in them since they are old and worn. But, black is the main color. I paint the black lightly to expose some of the underpaint color.  When the black is dry, which will be soon since black dries very fast, I will go back over the bricks individually and add colors and texture to both the bricks and the mortar.

Although the photo didn't show brick detail under the heaters, I put them in because I knew they should be there and the extra detail will be nice. I also put in a very wide base board where the floor meets the wall as they are very common in old buildings like this. These details will be important later.

So, there is where I am at now on this piece. I put about two hours in the work described above......and about the same amount of time showing the photos and writing about it.

But, I enjoy doing both!

I will be working on that long heater next.