I decided to use my interest in Carts of Darkness as subject matter for my painting, I felt that the documentary gave these people a platform and rather than trying to sell an image, they were just honest and seeing one character, in particular, Big Al riding down a hill I could see the joy and pure happiness on his face. Big Al went to prison for stealing shopping carts, and within half an hour of being released from prison, this was what he was doing…

The first image felt like what id been chasing, his expression showed how happy he was, and his trolly shows his unusual lifestyle, in this moment all his problems faded away and he was just enjoying himself.

I wanted to try something different for this painting, I decided to sketch out the portrait with acrylic paint rather than a pencil.

I decided to do an underpainting for my board as I was painting on MDF so the skin tones were likely to blend into the background without it. I started by blocking out the composition and the very light and dark on the face, starting to create a rough shape but very crude and without articulation.

I added in the blue of the background and began to paint the shape of the shirt, I wasn’t happy with the shape and would change it later as i was working with oils.

I started to articulate the facial features with oil, but I made sure I wasn’t too bold with my mark-making, as a mistake in the stage could have led me to overwork my painting, I could see the likeness forming on the left side of the face but knew the right side needed a lot of work.

I reshaped the shirt making it look more anatomically correct and touched up the face a lot, I had to add a lot more tonal variation to the cheek and eye to ensure I got a more 3D looking form, and I was mostly happy with the face at this stage, I also added in more tone on the neck and repainted the sky as I felt it was too vibrant in the base layer, I know the picture has an even more vibrant sky but because I didn’t use the deep reds and oranges in the face I didn’t want the sky to be distracting. Painting the more dark on the right side of the beard also helped to shape the mouth and right cheek, getting the right form was essential for me getting the expression right, and ultimately the expression was all I wanted.

I added in the background and continued to work on the shirt, I was pretty happy with this version but knew I still had to make some changes to the hair shape, shirt and add in the glasses, which could make or break.

I made the final changes and am really happy with how it turned out, I think the glasses work well as they are just a few marks to give the impression of glasses rather than a solid black line, I fixed the head shape and added more accurate shading to the shirt. I really like the expression as well as the marks structure on the face, I think I could have gotten a better likeness if I had spent more time on it but ultimately I am really happy with the final outcome, I managed to capture that pure joy.