Acceptable Radiation: Saul, the Creepy Clown

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Saul, the Creepy Clown

"Another performance finished," thought Saul, wearily. He's been living the life of a travelling performer since he ran away from home all those years ago. He spent the evening performing, then spent most of the night cleaning up after the performance; only to rise early to pack up and move on to the next town. It was a hard life. But it kept him busy--it helped him not to think about those...urges. The ones that pops used to beat him for. "I hope that sonovabitch died painfully," he brooded.

Snapping back to reality, Saul got back to scrubbing the grease paint off. The ugly light bulb overhead hurt his eyes as it reflected off of the paint. After all these years, that shit had started to stain his skin. "Can't be good for me," he mused as he glared at the red reflection of his cheeks in the mirror. "One of these days, I'm going to finally give this traveling up..."

What better to post on Halloween than a bust of a super-creepy looking dude? Why, make that dude also be a clown! It seems like more people are scared of clowns than actually enjoy them. This piece was painted for Banshee's Anonymous 2.0 painting contest. The concept I had for it is based around the fact that the person depicted looks like a he enjoys plucking the wings off of insects. However, I wanted it to be a perfectly mundane subject, but maybe one that you might confuse for a serial killer. I wanted to invoke shades of Buffalo Bill, only to pull back with a valid explanation for the creepiness...that is until the memory of John Wayne Gacy's famous clown portrait sneaked back into your head.

The few pieces I've already seen online have already blown this one out of the water, but I'm still very happy with it. I started out painting him in black and white and I even took some WIP photos, mostly in an attempt to remember where I wanted to place the highlights.

Once that was done, I worked the model according to pretty much the same process I used on the other Banshee bust. Although this time I concentrated on smaller areas before moving to the next. I also tried to crank up the contrast to simulate a poorly lit room but with a strong light source over head and also to add dramatic effect. When I was finished, I added red, blue, and white inks to the flesh mixes and applied them to the face and neck to simulate the grease makeup that was still uncleaned. I will apply some, then smudge it up with the regular flesh colors to make it splotchy.

For his hairline, I painted it like stubble since clowns usually wear wigs and I gave him a long widow's peak since it is a little bit foreboding. I refrained from beard stubble as I figured he'd shave his face more than his head since he'd be frequently applying makeup to his face.

So I'll end it with this, if you've never painted a bust and you enjoy painting, I highlight recommend you give one a go. They're a lot of fun and make a nice break from more traditional painting.