It’s been awhile since I’ve painted. I dug out my tubes of gouache and acrylic paint; it took some more effort to locate my brushes. Then I needed to decide what to paint.
While out and about online, I found an image of British actor Bernard Cribbins dressed in clothes from the Edwardian era. That appealed to me for some reason and I pondered what if Rusty wore an outfit like that. Since Rusty wouldn’t look too out of place in the retro universe of Sunnyville in that apparel, I decided to paint that.
The first thing I had to do was work out some thumbnails. I was invoking famed illustrator Howard Pyle when I did this. Even if the first thumbnail was right, I had to do more just to be sure.
The first thumbnail was taken directly from the inspirational photograph of Bernard Cribbins, but I decided the pose looked too stiff. Also, I did NOT want to plagiarize the photo directly. I thought of Rusty looking away from the book…but that’s not how Rusty would read. So I settled on him reading the book intently.
Bon Vivant, Pencil on paper, 8.5×11 in.
Yes, I accidentally put the wrong date on the pencil sketch; that was done this year and not back in 2014.
Now that I got this finished, it was time to move onto the next step. But that’s another post for another day.
