Domino in THUNDERBALL (1965)

THUNDERBALL was a perfect summer movie. The entire movie has sunny sky in the background. Then the underwater scenes, fantastically done for that era, cools you right down. They even created an impressive underwater battle sequence between two gangs of armed frogmen, just to kick the action up a notch. The amazing looking underwater vehicles belong to the villain Emilio Largo. He uses them to transport missiles from a war-plane he buried at the bottom of the sea. The beautiful Domino is Largo's mistress. At the end she gets her revenge with the harpoon. (8" x 10" acrylic on canvas)

Fiona Volpe in THUNDERBALL (1965)

It is a lot of fun to paint bad girls. They are beautiful but deadly. It's a challenge to make sure their evil sides show. Fiona Volpe, the iconic James Bond bad girl. Henchwoman to the villain Emilio Largo. She sets the standard for many more bad girl characters to follow. (8" x 10" acrylic on canvas)

Emilio Largo in THUNDERBALL (1965)

After Oddjob from GOLDFINGER, the next character I wanted to paint was from the next Bond movie, THUNDERBALL: Emilio Largo, an agent of Spectre. The entire movie took place at the Bahamas. This is the movie that introduced the iconic underwater battle scenes in Bond movies. It was spectacular. I remember how impressed I was by the underwater photography and the glamorous exoic locations after seeing the movie in a repertoire cinema when I was a teenager in the 1970s. Largo's evil pets are the sharks that he keeps in his swimming pool. I must draw at least one shark into the background. The shark in the painting was from a photo of a shark I found on Google. It was difficult to paint the flexible body of a fish. I think it works. However I discovered that palm trees were not something I knew how to paint. The result is pretty cartoonish. (8" x 10" acrylic on canvas)