Dirty Jobs portrait using the C.F. Payne technique

Illustration, 2008.03.08

C.F. Payne, one of America’s best-known contemporary illustrators, bases his style on multi-layered technique that he invented. Known as the C.F. Payne multimedia technique, the process consists of creating a very detailed pencil drawing of the subject to be illustrated and then covering the drawing in several different layers:

• Acrylic wash – used to give the subjects their lightest base color.
• Watercolor wash – gives the subject their medium tones. Generally, a neutral brown-orange color is washed over the entire image and then lifted off of the the subject’s highlights.
• Oil wash – gives the subject their shadow tones. A transparent mix of purple and green works great for this, especially in portraits. Again, the color can be washed over the entire image and then lifted off of the places where there should be no shadow.

Once the layers are in place, fix the entire image with some clayboard fixative (which leaves a good grain) and give the final coloring details with colored pencils.

I decided on trying to do a portrait of Mike Rowe, from the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, for my first C.F. Payne attempt because he has a very expressive face that I thought would be fun to work with. Overall I’m very pleased with how it turned out and I’d definitely try another portrait using this technique soon.