NOEL FIELDING
12” x 12” oil on board
My submission for ‘sky arts portrait artist of the week’.
This week’s sitter was the comedian/presenter ‘Noel Fielding’
Twice on ‘Grayson’s Art Club’ I have watched him paint himself an audience to perform to... well on this occasion he didn’t have to since the 2000 strong ‘sky arts community’ audience were there at 10am Sunday ready and waiting to paint him!
The background started in reference to his painted audience and then evolved- so now it looks like he’s fizzing and there are bubbles of his effervescent personality popping everywhere! He certainly kept us entertained and had me laughing out loud as he read out who people said they’d made him look like from the stream.
I was pleased to get it done in the 4hr session (bar the ‘wacky background’ under painting - more on that later). I’m resisting tweaking it as I don’t want to lose the energy that it has.
I also changed it up this week by using a quinacridone red tonal ground and a 3/4” flat brush for the most part.
It was also fascinating to watch the very talented ‘Kimberly Klaus’ painting Noel...I think you spoke for many of us ‘artistic introverts’ when you wrote recently:
‘I really appreciate having an avenue to think without language’.
Process shots for portrait of ‘Noel Fielding’ for ‘sky arts portrait artist of the week’
This portrait started with a suitably bonkers background... so mad in fact that I had to mask it off whilst I was painting in the face because it was so distracting! So, when I took the mask off again, he looked like Daniel Lismore with a bomb exploding behind him! However, had I not put it in first I knew I wouldn’t want to risk ‘ruining’ the painting by putting it in after and I wanted the background to sit properly behind the hair. Toning it down’ forced me to try something new- so after painting over the audience with oils I then rubbed the paint off with my finger to reveal them again.
Can you spot the one face in the audience - that’s me! I know there are also 2000 people around the world also painting him but here, in my studio in ‘lockdown’ it’s just me and Noel!