I thought about titling this post “Game of Shite”, or something like that, considering my completely written-down rule that there must be a curse word in all of my blog post titles, just to amuse myself. But I thought better of it because that might make it seem like I don’t like Game of Thrones and that would be incorrect. I mean, I didn’t love the ending, but who the hell did? Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. This post is about failure. The kind of failure that happens to every painter on occasion as I understand.
Since I’m an independent artist, that is I don’t have gallery representation (i.e. someone selling my work on my behalf) I read a fair amount about online marketing of artwork. One of the things I’ve read is that people want to make a connection with the artists they like to follow on social media. So last week I posted a photo of my actual face. That’s right, I have one! I have to admit I’d been hesitant to post pics of myself because I wanted to create the illusion that I’m young and cool not old and weird. But people seemed to like the pic. I was best best post of the last few weeks when it comes to likes and shares etc. So I’ll do more of that.
I’ve also read that people want to know other things that show that you’re actually human. One way to do that is to show that you’re not perfect. Now I post a lot of new work, but I’ve mentioned before that about one in ten of my paintings just don’t work out, although I feel like these days it’s more like one in fifteen so there’s some improvement happening or maybe I’m just having a good run. I know I’ve talked about this before in this here blog, but every painter paints a dud or two. And in the remainder of this post I want to talk about 0ne such dud.
After my successful painting of Ser Brienne of Tarth (go to my Instagram feed to see it), I decided that since I had just painted one of the more intimidating characters on the show I’d do a painting of the most diminutive character. I’m referring of course to Tyrion Lannister. So these days I start with a sketch that essentially amounts to a caricature. And Peter Dinklage who plays Tyrion has one of the most ‘caricaturable’ faces I’ve ever seen. Or so I thought. I had a hell of a time getting a good likeness. The thing is, that’s not as uncommon as I’d like it to be. To be a really good caricaturist you have to practice a lot. I mean a lot. And I spend too much time painting for that, not to mention the fact that I went years without doing it all.
Anyway, it wasn’t the first time I’d done a caricature that I didn’t think was great. It happens quite often but I often end up making a pretty damned good painting out it anyway. Case in point, my painting of Alex from A Clockwork Orange. The initial sketch was okay, but it’s really become one of my favourite paintings. It’s also still the most popular one I’ve ever posted to Instagram. But my initial sketch of Tyrion just did not translate to a good painting like Alex did. I post it here (and only here) so you can see how not perfect I am (not that I though you though I was.)
So, I was not going to let Tyrion defeat me. I went back to the (digital) drawing board. Did more terrible sketches and finally decided I needed to do something radical. And that was to do a caricature of him from memory. That is, stop looking at the photo references and just think about the shape of his eyes, the shape of his nose etc. And draw. And it worked, at least I think it did. Here is that sketch and the final painting.