Joker Painting Tutorial Pt 7

Sorry it has been a while since the last update. I never realized how draining it is for me to try to think of painting in steps, it really slows me down and makes me not want to paint! Step by step is hard, because I generally don't work in one fashion. I like to fool around a lot with the paint, sometimes I work on more interesting parts when I get bored with the monotony of some parts of the painting.

Okay, so now I'm going to introduce a new acrylic additive, a retarder:

This stuff is really nice, it thins the paint a bit, and it lets it sit longer before drying. This will be useful for wet on wet blending action.


This is where I left off last. I was fooling around with water and darker greyish blues to make shadows on the bottom of the strait jacket. I didn't like the outcome so much, so I went out and bought the retarder since I knew it would be easier for this effect.




Here's I've mixed my Payne's Grey (the darkest background color) with Azrilian Crimson to make a purple. I mixed about a dime size amount of the color, and added about four drops of the retarder to it and mixed it in. Then I painted the upper portion of the face with it. After that, I used some titanium white and the purple together to make a lavender middle tone:



This is where the excitement begins! I can now use that retarder to make my paint take longer to dry. I can have a wet dark purple, and a lavender, then blend them together on canvas using a swirl motion with the brush. I try to keep a lot of strokes in the look to give a real painterly look. I'm heavily influenced by the old pulp covers and movie posters of the 40s, they really had a cool painted look to them.


After a good transition of purples, I add on top of it a small amount of titanium white and retarder to get some bright white on the forehead, and cheek. This is really my favorite part of painting, its about building volume. I add dark colors, medium colors, then lighter colors, then I can darken it if need be, or brighten it more, until I am satisfied.


Here's the whole thing at the moment. Yes, Joker's face is very purple at the moment, but I'll be lightening it up a bit later on, after I get the face and everything else finished.


That's pretty much it for now. I'll probably be finishing the face, then going back to the strait jacket again. After that, I'll be working on the pants, then I'm going to have the pants fade back into the background by adding some more Payne's Grey and impasto. From there, it will be about tweaking little things and making minor adjustments.