Mark Knopfler
Digital Painting
Local Hero
Mark Knopfler is one of my favourite artists and I decided it was time to do a painting of him. I grew up listening to Dire Straits and could listen to Mark's guitar solos all day.
This painting came about when I saw Mark Knopfler play at the MEN Arena in Manchester. I found out weeks later that a friend of mine was also at the concert and thought it would be a nice gift to paint a photo of Mark playing at this concert. Luckily I found this fantastic photograph taken by flickr user symbenian. He allowed me to paint it and here is the final result.
One thing that drew me to symbenian's original photograph was the vibrant blue and magenta lighting that compliments the red guitar and blue t-shirt that Mark is wearing. In the painting I emphasised these lights by simplifying the background.
The original photo can be found here