Loose ink Elvis

It is good to get back to painting for myself,  after a long period of commissions over the Christmas period.

I was looking through some old You Tube videos of a young Elvis Presley in action.  I knew the exact pose I wanted and I also could visualise how it was going to look.  I wanted lots of movement and energy in the painting, so I opted for Indian ink and my trusty painting tool, the plastic fork with one tine.

Using the fork as a painting tool allows me to be very sketchy and loose.  I added two  shades of blue watercolour for his denims and a little red and yellow ochre for the skin tones.  The whole painting took around three minutes to complete.  Freeze framing the video gave me the exact pose that I was looking for.  Perfectly balanced, he wound up to a big finish for his song.

The film was Called Loving You.  His second movie.  Hope you like my interpretation.

Basin Street

This one is called Basin Street.
It is a mixture of Indian Ink work done with the fork as usual, and some watercolour.   I was much heavier with my use of watercolour this time as I wanted to create a smoky atmosphere.  I used earthy tones for the most part, but if you look behind the pianist's head you may see a colourful image of him drifting into the room.  This is a mixture of the colourful music and his aura.  That's what I tried to depict anyway.
We have been to New Orleans a couple of times now and have visited Basin Street itself.  Not much there to see now except the Lafayette graveyard and the Basin Street Railroad station which is now a museum.
We did, however, visit the French Quarter and enjoyed some fantastic live music in the Bourbon Street Jazz clubs.

O Fortuna

Another musically inspired piece.  I am a big fan of Carl Orff's 'Carmina Burana.    This little pen and wash sketch is my vision of the energy in that first measure of 'O Fortuna'.
This again was created with a broken plastic fork and a few light sweeps of watercolour.