Homage to Amy, and Brad and Angie portraits

I started on a portrait of Amy Winehouse in the style of Rosie the Riveter yesterday; being sort of Pop art I didn't think it would take me too long. However it took a while for me to plan what to do and how to execute it. And then a full day's painting yesterday, with a few corrections this morning.

The first difficulty I faced was how much of the original Rosie to reference, and how close to the poster style I should make my painting. Rosie was a poster girl for the USA war effort to get women into men's work while they were away fighting; it is an iconic symbol for feminism, female empowerment, and achievement.

The second problem was finding photographs of Amy's tattoos in the right angle from the internet, and a three quarters profile shot. Here's the one I found from a photograph of Amy with Blake. Then there was the whole problem of mashing together different portraits.

So here is my painting at about the halfway stage, with a quote from her song, Love is a losing game. It is the first line, "For you I was a flame", you can see I settled on a very close connection with the war committee poster of Rosie the riveter.

And here it is just about finished, with a little tidying up to do once the paint has dried. I am not sure if it works, but I gave it my best shot. Perhaps the face is too large.

Rather than get discouraged, I continued to work on Brad and Angie, since I had some left over flesh tones. I worked on the faces, but left the hands and hair for another day.