The Young Moi

Here is the first whack at a portrait of Moi Enomenga.  By the way Moi rhymes with soy.

He is older in his photo than I remember him.  For some reason my painting has made him young again.

I am not totally satisfied with it and will be fiddling some more in the ensuing days.

There is another technique I want to learn whereby the painting is approached using layers... as near as I can understand it would be like having three or four transparencies on which you would paint various parts of the work.  Background on one, blocking out the painting on a second one, color blocking on a third and then details on the last one. When all the layers are merged you have a complete painting.

Naturally if you are receiving these emails or following this blog you cannot escape my telling you all about my adventures in that in the days to come!

But for Moi I simply saved the various stages before I continued.
So when that prissy mouth really bothered me I was able, painlessly, with the Wacom Bamboo Tablet to go in and make changes to my digital "painting". Now I am happy that the mouth is right. This really is the final one......I think.

The almost complete painting is here:

Here are the various stages I went through to get to the almost finished version above.

Background and original sketch

blocking in some preliminary color

Even out skin tone, deepen shadows

deeper shadows, war paint and moustache added

Finally add some feather details

Brown fleshy bits

Okay so it seems there were a few folks who thought that brown fleshy bit hanging down ...the one by the side of his face...was some sort of rubbery earring.  

I looked at some pictures of the other Huaorani and it seems only a few use the ontoka (a wooden disk).  I saw no one wearing them when I visited in the mid 1990’s so I wondered if they were only used on heydays and holidays.

I found a description of how the piercing is done by another author who visited with the Huaorani and holds them in high regard as do I.  I have written for permission to post it. 

Suffice it to say for now that it seems that the Huao prefer the pierced lobes to swing empty.

At any rate here is my updated version of the Warrior