three guys

This is my recent finished water colour painting at Boston.  I followed the process of painting this like finishing a project... ya, in a no-so-timely manner though .. but I was constantly nagging myself, "I know, you're gonna leave it half-way! " ... good that I finished it  ... :)

In recent times, I have started observing people more closely, trying to note down their postures, activities and expressions. This painting is one of such imaginations, which perhaps reflects all these observations. The imagination of three guys sitting on a bench chatting with each other, was quite clear. But I could not remember a particular source of it. As I started making a rough sketch of it, I made sure I  made them look masculine. In addition, I did not want the three guys to look same. So I put effort to make them look different in posture and clothing. As I did so, it turned out I, kind of, carved out three different personalities. I was happy with this development. The left one looked like a shy person, who likes to listen more than talk, be in a corner and observe than being on the center-stage. The center one, was an extrovert, more of bratty person, loud and bright. The right one, an uptight person, proper, someone who goes by plan and ambitious, somewhat in the middle between introvert and extrovert. 

And as I went to apply colours, I had to put real effort on what colours their attires should look to reflect their personalities. And as I approached towards finishing the painting, I felt, a person does not have to be the way s/he appears. The shy person may actually be a confident and tough or even a cold person. The extrovert looking, sunshine guy might be an insecure person. The uptight, proper looking guy might actually be a wild person. Who knows? hmm... Does clothing and posture reveal everything about your personality? May be, more of how the person projects him/herself to the true world... consciously or unconsciously ... Who knows? With these thoughts, I decided not give a face to them and let the viewer perceive the characters as per their own will.

Too much philosophy, let me highlight some technical aspects. It has been a long time since I put down a character out of my mind. Most of these times, I was putting effort to watch, copy, learn skills. So the problem was too many vague lines. So I had to draw really light lines. That helped in cleaning later. So when I made a rought concept, I used these black permanent markers and outlined the lines I wanted to keep. It made easy for me to erase the rough noisy lines before painting. I feared if the black lines will look ugly against the water colours.... hmm ... but it looks ok :) 

So feeling happy that I did it, and it turned out ok and excited about my next art work ! :)