BLINDER by Michael Whelan, week 24 in his LEFTOVERS & PALETTED GREMLINS gallery project.
"Blinder" began as a splash of sepia acrylic ink that I turned into a character in one of Steve Cox's Mutant Hunter books. If you look into the paint, so to speak, you can see drippy marks and spots of sepia paint, some of which I turned into moles or radiation scarring or his left eye.
When I'm applying a textured glaze of acrylic on a panel, I usually put a piece of scrap paper under it to catch any overspill. In this case, the "paper" used was a unique artificial substrate that doesn't allow water-based media to soak into it. Any fluid paint or ink beads up and makes interesting patterns.
Seeing a suggestive smear on one side of the scrap paper, I cut off the messy part, turned it sideways and realized that it could become the basis for a "portrait" of Blinder. When I came across the scrap later, I gave myself the time to go into it and develop it into a simple monochrome rendering.
Though I had fun with it, I decided that I was getting bored with umber colored sketches. I glazed some colors into the piece after protecting the first layer with a coat of clear acrylic medium.
