Thy Saints Surrounded, Oil and Goldleaf, 12" x 24"
This painting is a tribute to one of my all-time favorite movies, The Boondock Saints (1999). This is actually based on a still from the movie where the fraternal twins, Murphy and Connor MacManus, are saying their family prayer in preparation to execute a Russian mafia boss. It's a powerful scene and one I thought fitting to paint. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. The twins are bad-ass and hilarious, trading brotherly quarrelsome barbs in a delightful Irish brogue. Between this and the fact that both of these actors, Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery are, by all accounts, absolutely charming, sweet, and appreciative of their fans it's no wonder this move continues to grow in popularity.
The Process
The first step for me usually is a small sketch. This one's about 7" x 9". I use these to get familiar with my subjects, to study values (how light or dark something is) and work out any compositional issues or ideas I might have. When sketching this, I thought about how it might be cool to incorporate a halo-like motif, similar to what is found in medieval or Coptic Christian iconography, since they're saints and all:
There is no end to how much I love the initial stages of composing a painting. I start sketching in forms with a transparent dark mixture, usually an oxide red and viridian or ultramarine blue or ivory black. Sometimes Van Dyke Brown. What happens next is a lot like sculpting on two dimensions. It's a process of adding pigment and taking it away in successive steps, layer upon layer. I use huge brushes, tiny brushes, fingers, finger nails, paper towel dipped in mineral spirits, palette knives, even credit cards to alternately build up or carve into the paint. The real point of this phase is to establish a composition I'm happy with and get the values figured out. And since this is a double portrait of two characters whose likeness I really want to nail, I took a lot more time to work out their features before moving on.
Let's zoom in a little on Murph, shall we? Why not:
Now that my underpainting was done I had to wait...and wait...and wait until it was bone dry. Then I could apply the adhesive size to the "halos" in preparation for gold leafing. That required tiny brushes and a lot of patience.
You can see the shininess of the size here. This is the space between the brothers' heads. A lot of Connor's hair has been sized and leafed over. I'll show you what I mean a few photos down.
Though I'll probably never be a professional gilder, I do enjoy adding the gold leaf to canvas. These brothers may be saints, but they're rough. I don't think a perfect halo would have fit these two. So I laid the gold down in chunky bits.
I started working on Connor first, blocking in colors, adjusting value and temperature as I went along. You can see I leafed pretty far into the line of his hair. I wanted to be able to capture that fly-away thing he's got going on. To do that I would have to paint over the leaf.
Got to a stopping place with Connor about here and thought I was pretty happy with everything. Of course the next morning I decided I needed to rework his eyes - they were just a bit too far apart so needed to be fixed. That's typical of working on portraits, at least for me. I think I LOVE something then once I give my eyes a rest I'm all, "crap, that whole thing needs to be painted over!" You'll be able to tell the difference between this one and the final version below.
After that I went onto work on Murphy. I remembered to snap a few more pictures intermittently to show a little more of my process, or at least what I used for this painting. Since I had a strong underpainting to guide me, I squinted my eyes and really simplified the dark forms that define the planes of his face.
Then I start developing flesh tones, hotter ones on his cheek, nose and chin, cooler on his temples and side of his mouth.
Let's zoom in on those huge chunky swaths of color:
I wish I could say I have this rational method of developing flesh tones but I just don't. Though I start out with a big pile of brownish made with transparent oxide red, viridian and crimson, what happens between that and the hot mess of a palette you see below is mostly a mystery to me. I make the pile warmer by adding a red or an orange or a yellow. Cooler by adding some sort of blue, green or ivory black. A little white to "gray" it out or a lot of white to make it a lighter value. All I can say is thank God things end up making more sense on canvas.
Since I prefer working wet-into-wet ("alla prima") was hoping to avoid having to come in and rework something after the paint was dry. As it turned out, I was still happy with Murphy after a few days, so for the final session just worked on the hairline and ear. No substantial changes to make. Sometimes it happens like that, too.
A few final brush strokes, and some decisions about the background and it's ready for a signature.
Thy Saints Surrounded, Oil and Goldleaf, 12" x 24"
detail, Connor:
detail, Murphy:
