"This is not the painting you're looking for..."

Because even after 33 years, Alec Guinness is still Bad A.

Greg Manchess, who is the man, created a painting of C3PO for Spectrum 16 that is absolutely amazing and got me jazzed to splash some paint around in a distinctly Star Wars manner.  Donato Giancola, who is also the man, had a great bit of advice about painting from a photo:  approach it as though you are painting from life and you have a model who is really good at holding long poses.  That proved useful here, picking and choosing what to include, determining what was important and how to show it, and in general not being a slave to the photo but working "with" it.

Also, I'll be damned if he didn't just post a painting he did of Old Ben Kenobi as well.  Awesome, just awesome.  And I've got a long ways to go.  Goes without saying, though I'll say it anyway, that I'm incredibly excited about being able to study under these two masters this summer.

Oils and around two hours or so of sloshing some fat juicy paint around.

Edit:  New photo, slightly better light.  At least there's much better contrast in the top half of the image.