I mentioned in a previous post that I would like to paint my faces on a larger scale. After prepping my metre square canvas with a pink base coat I began sourcing an image of Dr Who. David Tennant who plays the tenth Doctor offers a variety of emotions, especially of regret and remorse in the last two episodes when he is aware of his own mortality. I used an image right before the Doctor dies. The way the colour dissipates in the image appealed to me and added to the emotional undercurrent. He is shown looking up, like my other images he does not look directly at the viewer but far away at something we can only guess at.
I began painting an outline of the face before filling in the background. The yellow worked well over the pink but I have yet to decide if I will leave any areas of the base coat showing through. At the moment it has given more warmth to the painting. As I have been working on a larger scale, I have been using larger brushes in a mixture of smooth and coarse haired. In areas I have let the paint drip or scraped at the paint with palette knives at an attempt to add texture and create more expression.
In this two part story the Doctor’s arch enemy hears sounds in his head: a knocking or the beating of a time lord’s heart and the Doctor himself is told he will hear a similar sound before he meets his demise. I may try exhibiting my paintings with such sounds to give a more immersive experience.
