Debbie Harry painting shave been a really exciting part of my painting career to work on. i have been a Blondie fan since I was twelve years old and I have seen both the band and Deborah Harry perform solo many times.
There is something truly iconic in Debbie Harry’s beautiful features. her eyes smile at times and I have always tried to bring some of this character through in my celebrity artwork wether they have been earlier pop art paintings of Debbie Harry, more freestyle mid career paintings or latterly more realistic oil paintings on board.
Debbie Harry drawing - graphite on paper. This original artwork has been in my mind for some time and has finally made it onto paper. One of the first in a new series of pencil drawings with a realistic edge.
I wanted to paint a "Deborah Harry" but it had to be right. Blondie were last in Glasgow in June this year and I was too ill to go. The last time I saw them was on the "Curse Of Blondie (Phasm 8) tour and it was an awesome gig. I wanted to capture not just Debbie's beauty, but that "wow factor" that she has when performing live.
I created this artwork of Debbie Harry in big, bold brush strokes over the top of the initial drawing work. I wanted it to look vey loose and it was part of a series of similarly style paintings which were prepared for my first major solo art exhibition in 2007.
Debbie Harry and Blondie have long been something of an obsession of mine and I like to experiment with different ways to paint Deborah Harry. This was my first, very graphic and stylised Blondie artwork and the painting created a little bit of a stir at the time, appearing in the Scottish press and in the 5th Anniversary Blondie Review.
Blondie and Debbie Harry paintings were canvases I cut my teeth on just before I began to paint full time. Initially, I concentrated on celebrities whom I was definitely a fan of rather than just what seemed to be in demand at the time.
With the title swimming around in my head, this is a painting that I thought I would like to leave at a certain point without “overcooking” in order that it retains a lightness both in tone and in colour. However, as the painting progressed and I was led by the artwork itself, it became something more contrasting.
