Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch is the chair of News Corporation, the company that houses many newspapers, TV networks, and other vehicles for information, including Fox News and Dow Jones (the company that runs The Wall Street Journal). A while back, he was a TIME Magazine cover story, around the time he was trying to acquire Dow Jones, which he has since done. I decided to do a portrait of the man.

Aged faces with lines and forms provide some nice opportunities for visual interest. I tend to lay down paint with a soft brush and sculpt it around with a stiffer brush, pushing it to create the landscapes of the face, leaving brush strokes showing here and there, combining hard and diffused edges, and playing with various degrees of translucency.

On this image, I also overlaid a couple of textures, digitally. It can be seen best in his collar and in the background. I wanted to introduce a bit more to the visual textural feast. It can help draw the viewer in as they try to peel back all the layers within the illustration.