I had the great honor of painting the late Kenneth Francis Begasse’s portrait. Affectionately known as “Senior”, the piece was commissioned by Michael Sanzen, partner at Concentric Healthcare Experience, as a gift for Senior’s family. The work and process were transformed into a beautiful mural, which was unveiled at their TriBeCa headquarters last week.

As the painting was a surprise, Ken Begasse Junior’s wife, Christine, was instrumental in choosing the composition and collage elements. The objective was to accurately capture the nuances and passions of a great man.

You can view the entire process here in just over 80 seconds — soundtrack courtesy of Nelson Downend and Ahmed Mahmoud.

The source image, propped on my Jackson Hole studio easel, ready for action.

After several rounds of back-and-forth, we landed on the perfect collage materials. Here, you will see the headlines carefully trimmed, and the collage map outlined on the canvas.

Here, the foundation collage elements have been pasted to the surface, with help from our friend gel medium.

The piece began with an orange and red under-painting, including a wash over the facial collage elements. To establish color balance, I painted the brightest areas (the eyes and teeth) first.

In portraits, I prefer to work shadows-to-highlights — this work was no different.

The transition to midtones always proves most challenging… it’s difficult to predict if the color schematics will balance in the end…

At this stage, I felt good about the tonal selections… but realized the highlights required a bit more pop.

So I brightened them up quite a bit, and it quickly became cohesive.

Before venturing into Senior’s hair, I wanted to paint the background… this further assured balance with the facial tones.

I really wanted to capture the bounce in his hair, so I began with three primary tones of payne’s grey (hand-mixed with cadmium red, pthalo blue (green shade), hooker’s green and titanium white).

From there, I added four more — two highlights and two shadows, to create the waves, depth and volume.

All that remained was the shirt, and some addition of red and yellow highlights to add some pop.

Here is the final painting — it was an honor and a privilege to create this piece. Thank you Michael and Concentric for the commission; Christine for your beautiful insight during the process; Ken and the entire Begasse family.