One more from "Mongol". Desaturated palette. Love, love, love the lighting in this one.

This was actually done yesterday. Lots of saturated cadmiums in this one. Had gone to Chinatown with my dad and his sister the day before, maybe influenced by the trip?

The King's Speech

Was watching the movie and came upon this great face during the last part of the film. This older gentleman had such character, he seemed almost like a caricature. I did not capture how weathered he was, but I loved the colors~I used my new Quinacridone Blue Violet for the darkest skin tones in shadow. It worked perfectly for this; while not an exciting color right out of the tube, it is desaturated enough to give me a more "muddier" skin tone. (For those of you not familiar with painting with acrylics, it is hard to control it's brilliance.) I also used a new brush~Grumbacher Gainsborough 1271 flat #4 bristle brush, which is scary to use because you have no control. I loaded the brush with paint and went for it. I actually had to repaint the face all over again, since I did not like the first try. But because this brush was so bristly (I think it's a canvas brush), it gave me a wonderful random performance, yeah, you probably think I did the brushwork on purpose...I got lucky. This, I think, is my best entry in my color journal as yet! :)

Pirates of the Carribean~
This one will be the last post in this series for a few weeks...I've got real work to attend to for now. Back to sunlight and to the beach! I love beachy scenes! Wonderful opportunity to paint a wonderful medley of earthtones in the clothes and to play with brush strokes. Used a tiny filbert brush for skirt. Never saw this movie. Rush job; unfinished, being called away to...responsibilities now..sigh...

WHY THIS WORKS:
The background is the most saturated with color and the lightest value, which is a contrast to the figures who are mostly dark neutrals with sparks of diluted saturated color. In most of the pictures I have worked on, the figures tend to be the most saturated and lit up with light and the background is dark and desaturated.

Eric Bana as King Henry the 8th. He has this glazed look in this screen shot. It may be that he has just gotten rid of his first wife to acquire Ann Boleyn and has just realized what he is in for when he learns that Ann will do anything to be Queen...but I could have it wrong since it's been awhile since I've seen the movie. My biggest complaint about this film was that they had spent money on the gorgeous costumes, great location...and had just about no reflective lighting so that everything got dark and dropped into mud...it sucked a lot of the pleasure of viewing the film for me...

This one took about 30 minutes.