My first Wild West painting was far more romantic. This one I was aiming for the more sinister aspects of the west, the grizzled, dirty old gunslinger. I found this one a lot harder than the previous. For one thing, getting the relationship between the lighter and darker areas wasn't easy. I originally made the sky far too deep a blue, and twice had to lighten it and weaken the colour to get it to a point where it stayed in the background where it belongs. Then there was the buildings on the right. They have to be in shadow, but the details on the door way and signage also need to be clearly discernable. I painted them, and then had to dull them down twice before I got to the stage you can see here.
As for the gunfighter , I'm not desperately unhappy with him. I just couldn't get his face even looking human when I made the original sketch onto the canvas, but I'm not unhappy with how it looks painted. Only . . . well, when I'd painted the face there was something about it bugging me. And then I realised what it was. It may just be me, but I think he has a definite look of Sir Ian McKellern about his features. Hence me christening the painting Gandalf the Gunslinger.
I don't think it's as good a painting as Wild West 1 - I had an offer to buy that one within an hour of posting it on the net. But I did think at several times during the process that this one was becoming an absolute disaster, and it's turned out better than I thought it was going to. I plan to complete a wild west trilogy with on more painting. We've had romance with the first, danger and the threat of death in the second, and in the third we'll have action, natural scenery, and joie de vivre. Well, that's the idea, anyway.
