It’s been a busy week with lots of business and having prints made and such. But I’ve been extremely busy working on a painting of Carey Price. Definitely the hardest painting I’ve worked on and I haven’t even begun painting it yet. The details in these modern masks are a nightmare to deal with – but I can tell that the end results will be spectacular if I get it right – which I’m striving for. This year I want nothing but the best out of each of these masks.
It’s Friday, and although the day isn’t done I won’t be finished this painting by the end of the week. But I didn’t want to leave you viewers with nothing – so I decided to post two pictures showing all that I’ve been dealing with over the past three and a half days. I began by researching his mask. He began wearing a new mask for the playoffs – but he’s had a lot of masks. I could only find so many pictures with him wearing it, but I found a good angle from a commercial he’s in. I took a snapshot of that and used this angle for my drawing. However, he wasn’t wearing the correct mask that he’s currently wearing, so I could only draw out the outline and his face from my reference image. I spent the next two and a half days painstakingly drawing, calculating, and adjusting my drawing lines from a flat side-view picture of his current mask, and detailing it out onto this angle shot view of his mask. Not only is it on an angle, but he’s tilting his head downwards too. Really made life tough. It felt like I redrew the image about 3-5 times because I would continuously readjust my lines as I went along adding in more and more information.
Next I began to tape off my painting. I always start by painting white first. I began taping off all that isn’t white and using an exacto knife to cut away any excess tape… and there is a lot of it! There are so many odd angles on these newer masks. Straight lines that curve around the shape of the mask, the bends in the bars of the face shield, the block letters… the “Cursive” lettering! It was so tough that it took me a combined 8 hours over the course of two days.
I’ve finally completed this, and now for the rest of my Friday I will begin painting the white. This doesn’t mean I’m just using white. There are many different shades and tones of colour that offset the white balance – but to the naked eye you wouldn’t notice it just by glancing at it… But when you dissect an image you will notice a whole wilderness of hidden colours within something that to your mind just looks blank and white! Fun stuff!
