Cardini Work In Progress - Jay Fortune - Internationally Acclaimed Artist & Author

Cardini - Work in Progress

Welcome to this Collectors Only secret page! These work-in-progress pictures capture my process behind my official Cardini painted portrait.

Here’s how I begin. After creating a few development sketches on paper, where I familiarise myself with the ‘spirit’ of the person I aim to paint, I sketch out the portrait in paint on the canvas.

This will be around the fourth or fifth time I am drawing them at this point, so feel I have already gotten to know them. Honestly, I must spend more time studying old black and white photographs of magicians than anyone in history – ha!

This first part of my process is about plotting where I will put the first tones, as well as staying accurate and true to the original photograph.

Blocking the background

Next, I block in the first coat of background. I’m not too fussy here, unconcerned if I go over any lines or lose any hard edges. At this point, I merely want to differentiate the portrait from the canvas, so blocking the background allows me to focus on the portrait. Too much white, for me, makes it hard to picture the work in my mind’s-eye and guide how it should go.

I work intuitively, while staying true to the reference image. This part of the process takes perhaps thirty minutes, as I use a 3-inch flat brush. Again, neatness isn’t the aim, just getting rid of as much white around the portrait as I can, to narrow my focus.

Blocking the costume

With the first cover of background filled, I apply the same wide brush and remove the white from the costume. Here, you can see some areas left white, as there will be highlights here which I will return to and want to find immediately as I build the work. By the time I have reached this stage, I am perhaps three sessions or more into the portrait.

The length of each session varies, depending on my mood, energy and schedule that particular day. I may have twenty minutes, or I might go ‘into the zone’ and spend a good three hours on a painting.

Usually, the initial painted outlines will take me one to two sessions, quite intense as there is a lot of detailed work here (see top photograph).

After this, the background and costume blocking may be done in a single session, or two.

The First Wash

I now apply the first wash. This is more-or-less put over any remaining white spaces on the canvas. I have left the edges where the costume meets the background, as this will be subtly suggested as the painting develops.

You’ll notice I have left the top hat white. Again, this wasn’t pre-planned, just an intuitive step, knowing that it will be a case of painting a black hat and being able to find it against the background, as the painting develops as a whole.

The first wash will be done in one session. I am now around one week into the work.

Building Form

Here, you can see how I have blocked in the top hat, and suggested its outline by bringing in white in the background.

With a technique called dry-brushing, I darken areas such as the face, gloves and other parts of the costume. Dry-brushing is exactly that: I remove almost all of the paint from the brush, so it is completely dry and then whatever little is left on the brush transfers to the canvas. This is a difficult technique to get right, as it is completely random. I often find some areas get lots of paint, whereas others hardly any.

For me, this is part of the excitement of the process as I will have to work to balance these areas of light and dark as the painting develops. This keeps the painting very much ‘alive’. I feel that the work and I have a creative relationship, a lemniscate if you will, of my painting, stepping back, evaluating and then painting some more. This back and forth gives the work an energy and spontaneity that keeps me fully engaged in the process.

The sh*t stage!

This is one of the longest, most engaging yet equally frustrating parts of the process! As an artist, I have enough experience to know that every painting goes through what I call (pardon my French, a-hem!) the sh*t stage.

This is also the place in the process where many creatives give-up, as nothing appears to be working and one feels as if the final portrait is lost.

However, experience teaches that it has to go through this sh*t stage to find the gold at the end of the rainbow!

Here, everything seems flat, stark, messy and scruffy. The eyes seem like cut-out holes in a mask. The mouth and nose are outlined and lifeless. But this is the final laying of the foundations before the real finesse begins. Without going through this stage, the final portrait will not have the right look and, perhaps most importantly, will not have the spirit of the person.

Revealing the person

After the trials and self-doubt of the above stage happily accepted and conquered, comes the long, long process of discovering the person.

This is where I will spend, literally, weeks and weeks from the odd fifteen minutes, through to a good few hours, fully engaged ‘in the zone’, flowing with the process. I’ll be constantly referring to the reference picture.

I randomly move across the whole picture, focusing intensely on one tiny area, before intuitively moving to another. Everything seems quite unconnected at this point, but I am over the doubting stage and begin to uncover the personality of the performer.

It is like an excavation: I know they are ‘there’, I just have to find them, through patience and paint. This is a highly rewarding part of the process, as they reveal themselves to me moment by moment.

And... rest.

This is where I do my final balancing act (I am a Libra, so that might explain why I see everything as a balance) between the reference photograph and my imagined outcome.

With Cardini, I enjoyed painting parts of the photograph that weren’t there: the rest of the top hat and edge of the billiard ball.

The tiny details, such as small highlights, the double dot of light in each eye, eyelashes and reflected light on the gloves and balls, all come together so the eye of the viewer can enjoy the whole piece without being drawn to one area in particular.

My signature ‘slashes’ complete the composition, and I enjoy feeling where these should belong in one session, no interruptions.

I paint to music, but also while listening to magic. Cardini was painted while I listened to The Best of Magic (ITV) and Mystery School Monday episodes. Memorable music throughout this painting included albums such as Ocean Without a Shore (Weather Systems), Sway (Blue October) and Orange Marmalade (Evgeny Grinko). The entire painting took around six to seven months. But I’m still not done…

The journey continues...

The final painting is then captured by leading fine art specialists, who expertly colour-match the giclee print with the original work. This is a tedious and disciplined process with hours of fine tuning.

In this photograph (sunny morning!), I am beginning work on hand-embellishing one of the prints for a collector. This is where I paint onto the print, adding texture and making certain areas really ‘pop’. Like all my painting, this is an intuitive process, so no two are ever alike.

The prints are then signed, certified and carefully wrapped before shipping. I am humbled to have collectors across the world and it is such a nice feeling knowing my work brings pleasure to magicians and collectors. It makes all the work and the self-doubt truly worthwhile!