Great start, keep er coming!

5. Day, October 24, 2022

Second eye area and cheek also done!

The painting was deliberately asymmetrical, since the incidence of light through the crooked cap is also not uniform.

For this reason I also painted the cheeks one after the other and not at the same time! If you paint them at the same time, you unconsciously strive for symmetry and only uselessly make life difficult for yourself...

This is what Wilhelm the Great looks like now...:











Cheers

6. Day, October 24, 2022


It goes on!

Forehead, with a thin shadow of the cap peak (more difficult than I thought!), nose and ears...:







The highlights on the nose and forehead are still missing...


Cheers

7. Day, October 25, 2022


Highlights placed on the uncovered forehead, refined shadows of the hat, ears refined with highlights and other shadows, highlights placed on the bridge of the nose, lips painted, herewith...



... and starting with the chin. That's missing the deep shadows and a highlight or two that I want to do tomorrow...








Cheers

8. Day, October 27, 2022


Reworked the nose, reworked the mouth, finished painting the chin - and then I followed my masochistic inclination and halved the already very small white reflex points and the eyes.

The smaller they are, the more realistic they look!







Tomorrow we'll continue with the neck, which I'm not really looking forward to - because for some reason necks have always been the biggest problem for me...


Cheers

Looks very good Martin.......was that necks or necking?

Wayne

Really excited waiting to see moustache and eye brows to make skin tone pop! Beautiful job on skin tones.

Another masterpiece in the making.

9. Day, October 29, 2022


The neck is done!

When painting I took into account the turning of Mr. Kaiser's head...:








Cheers

I will continue in a few days for tomorrow it's Tanjas Birthday and we have some guests.

Cheers

Lovely work so far Martin.


Neal

10. Day, November 4, 2022


After a visit-related break, I'm going on with Mr. Kaiser's hair today!

Our model photo...



... is not necessarily suitable as a template for this, as it was taken from a very specific angle in order not to make it too obvious to the public what had long been reality:

In 1912, "Wilhelm the Great" had already become "Wilhelm the Grey", as these two photos...





... prove as well as this one here...:



This graying hair color now has to be reproduced - not so easy!

First I underpainted the emperor with black acrylic paint...



... missed to get optical depth in his hair.

Then I continued with oil paints...:



The "burnt umber" is also there because gray hair always contains traces of the original color - and because working only with black and white tones always involves the risk that the result will end up looking "chalky".

And so I painted strand after strand, always with slightly different shades, until I finally got this result...:










Cheers

11. Day, November 5, 2022

Today it's the turn of the eyebrows!

However, a look at the prototype photo leaves us a little perplexed...:



Wilhelm's eyebrows can hardly be seen there - and what can be seen is indicated by the colorist in natural brown.

Well, Wilhelm the Vain also had himself "rejuvenated" a bit here, because our comparison photo clearly shows that his eyebrows were already graying in 1912...:



And that's how I painted them - but this time with acryls...:



The result...:







I can satisfied resume: My little resin head is becoming more and more "SM" (Seine Majestät/His Majesty)!

As the final step of the face painting, the Emperor's beard is next in line - and this episode will also have room for some nice stories about it...


Cheers

12. Day, November 6, 2022


"Es ist erreicht!" ("It's reached!") - that was the official name of the beard worn by Kaiser Wilhelm II in the German Empire!

What exactly had been achieved, however, remained open. Did that mean that one had finally become a "empire" of "world importance" (as they said back then) that was governed by ONE will?

A role that the German Kaiser was constitutionally not entitled to, but which he intended to play from the start! An entry by Wilhelm on September 7, 1891 in the Golden Book of the City of Munich showed which role he intended to play: "Suprema lex regis voluntas" - the supreme right is the will of the king.

And it was precisely this role - illegally above the constitution - that the Emperor played, simply by meddling everywhere.

He justified his actions with this: "I will lead you towards glorious times!" - a promise that burst like a soap bubble by August 1914 at the latest.

Well, fans of "our glorious young Kaiser" (another popular expression of the time") saw the growing beard as the German imperial eagle that Wilhelm II wore on his face...



... his opponents, who - not without justification - accused him of Caesarian madness, found the beard simply grotesque!

Meanwhile, caricaturists from all over the world loved to wear the imperial beard: you didn't need to know anything else about the rest of the physiognomy of the German loudspeaker, it was enough to draw over the tips of the beard pointing upwards! Then everyone knew immediately who was meant, regardless of whether in Russia...







... either in UK...







...or in France...:







On the other hand, Wilhelm's supporters in the German military (which received an incredible amount of money during his reign!) showed their approval and allegiance by copying the imperial beard - which was common to all ranks and branches of service...:









Of course, that also happened in the bourgeoisie loyal to the emperor...



... so the loud-mouthed, unprincipled and cowardly Diederich Hessling in Heinrich Mann's famous novel "Der Untertan" ("The Subservient") the also the loud-mouthed, unprincipled and cowardly Diederich Hessling naturally also wears a Kaiser beard, albeit a rather measly copy... :






**continued next post**