McCartney Times

Me again.

Some people are interested in how I make certain Beatles paintings, so I thought I would pull back the curtain a bit and talk about this one that I posted yesterday called, “Mendips”.

After seeing the well-known photo of John, playing his guitar in 1966 while in Greece, I was really inspired to paint it, or somehow use it in a painting. I really like the feel and emotion that was in the image of John, simply playing his guitar, while simply sitting on a bed by himself.

I then had the idea to paint him as a teenager sitting on his bed in his bedroom at Mendips, his childhood home. So I started the long process of piling through pictures of the house and more specifically, Johns bedroom. There were plenty of shots people had taken of the room but I needed something to show a good portion of his room. I found this picture(also a well-known picture) that somebody had taken from the doorway, standing by the open door, looking in towards that great stained glass window, and thought it was perfect. I tried positioning John several ways till I came up with what I thought to be the best angle.

The pure stroke of luck that really defined this painting was, while looking for pictures of his room, I found this old grainy small photo taken of his room with all this stuff piled on it. The photo was taken by the man that bought Mendips from Mimi. He took the picture to show a guitar he had found in the attic that must have belonged to John. See, when Mimi moved out, she left many things in the house, furniture, rugs, plates, lamps, and obviously items in the attic. But!!!

And here’s the cool part, gentle readers… all the items in John’s room, bed, bed cover, school desk, curtains, wall paper and rug, were left in the room! Johns whole room minus clothes and personal items were as John left them when he moved out!!