The making of!
Walk-through painting of "The Lady of mystery"
a depiction of author and artist Annika von Holdt.
1) The beginning:
I feel lucky to be a friend of A, not a "real life" friend, but an Internet friend, which can be just as important to you if you get a good connection. Often you might even get closer to a distant friend than a "real life" friend, because you have the freedom to talk about things you might not talk about with others.
...And we talk
a lot … often about art. We discussed portraits, recently, and talked
about the meaning of colors if you set out to capture someone's personality
. The conversation had me thinking that I might try to catch a glint of
who A really is, get a glimpse of her soul so to speak. To me that's the
hard part of a portrait, to capture that particular something that radiates
from a person's personality. It is what I always aim for, but don't always
succeed in. Now and then, though, I feel I might have captured a tiny
piece of someone's soul.
This is a walk-through about soul catching in portrait painting. I'm after
A's soul muhhaaa ;) J/K
2)
Everything has a beginning,
so most of the steps here are just the shapes/colors to get the features
between the reference and the painting right. I have used AvH stock photo
you find that
here >> for reference (mind you, I have never meet A,
I only have a few photos to paint my mental picture from). This would
be an easier task if I knew her in real life, so my mission is not at
all that easy.
3)
All right, in this piece you se I gave her red hair. Why on earth did I do that? A's hair is dark brown. Well, that is just to lift the hair color a bit, because dark brown intend to look black. So I can lift it some so it doesn't get to dark and lifeless. I need some more colors and I chose reddish, a warm palette close to her complexion and personality; a warm and caring person.
4)
Then I start to put in the dark color of her hair, and it covers up most of the reed, though it's still there. The background color will have an impact on the color I put in on top, even if its' not visible to the naked eye. I used high lights of light gray and light warm beige, still mainly using warm colors.
5)
Here I work more with
the face and features again, used red lip color, because it fits with
a dark beauty :) More work on the shapes and features, I often draw rough
strokes just to mark where the lines go, and it keeps me on track when
I zoom in to paint details. It's easy to loose shape/form and over-do
the area's in close detail painting.
6)
Here is the area round the eye I work on; still rough shapes and hard lines. And I do not aim for hard lines and featuresin this portrait, as that doesn't reflect A's personality. She has a sensitive humor, that reflects in her smile, but also a deep unknown mystery. So here I start to chase the warm colors in her skin tone. I soften the colors a bit, but as you can see, I have lost the shapes on the way ... at this time, however, I don't care about that, it's more important to determine her colors.
7)
I didn't "find"
the person I got to know in the reference photo, really, so here I start
to find my vision of A. I know she loves straw hats, so she's going to
wear one of those, of course :) She also loves flowers. The hard part,
at this point, was to find a flower I felt symbolized her, first I thought
of a rose ... a white one ... but I got a sense that wasn't quite "her"
after all. She's got more in her in a way ... even if a rose is THE most
beautiful flower in the world in my opinion, but I am not the one I'm
painting *LOL* I wanted something fragile, still strong and beautiful,
so see for your selves ... Did I pick right one? Suppose only A can answer
that question.
8)
I set out to depict
a truly female woman in every way, strong and in the same time sensitive.
Her straight hair curves slightly which symbolizes both her softness and
her strength. And to give the face a light framing and to build up a stronger
part of the face: The area around her eyes, I added a "band"
or a shadow under the hat. I thought that added a nice sense of dark mystery,
fitting for a female Stephen King :)
9)
So what's next?... Am I not finished?
10)
..Oh
no ... Now it's time for the fine, fine details that makes this face A's.
Now I sharpen the lines
The eyes are not yet hers. And the facial features need touch-ups up here
and there... Still, you can se that I've chosen warm colors again, not
to girly colors; this is a woman, not a girl. But not hard colors either
... just enough to bring out the soft sensitive person with a strike of
unknown depths, a very strong women with a will of her own.
11)
Ah.. I think I got it..
12)
... but who am I to judge. Did I catch a tinny bit of A's soul? I did try ... it's the way I se her ... Beautiful, talented, warm, strong and fabulous, my online friend, who I'm very happy to have gotten to know and I hope our friendship will last a long, long time...
// nenne