Vanitas 27 update (04-22-2021)

 Just finished working on peaches (well, almost). Now moving onto the fabric.

Vanitas 27 update (03-27-2021)

This is what the drawing looks like today. I finally made up my mind about the treatment of the background. The original reference photo has just a plain gray background and I found it kind of boring. Then I discovered another photograph of a wall I took in Venice that will work perfectly with this piece. It is very similar to the one I have used for 2 of my Vanitas drawings but from a different location. What would I do without Venice?

New Vanitas drawing started

I started a new drawing for my Vaniras series. This is Vanitas 27. This is another mixed media drawing of graphite and colored pencils just like Vanitas 25, only there will be more colored pencil elements in it. This is the 4th piece coming out of a reference photo shoot with a model. As far as the number of art works coming out of a single photo session goes, this is very unusual. It just proves that my model Ms. M was so inspiring. I am visualizing this drawing to be about 16" x 18", and it will take another month or so to finish.

Vanias 26 finished! (01-13-2021)

Today I finished the drawing "Vanitas 26". I decided not to add any detail or texture to the falling feather. Better that way because it visually unites the blank feather with her face where her eye is absent, and the lack of texture creates an illusion of "glow" as if the light from above went through it and hit her face. Initially I was thinking about working on a wider composition, almost square with lots more feathers floating in the air, but I decided to take a minimalist approach drawing only one feather. I think my decision was sound. Why do you need to use a whole bunch of the same stuff when you can say what you want to say even more effectively with just one?

 

New Vanitas drawing begins!

I started this new drawing yesterday. The original photo reference was a B/W image on a medium format film I took over a decade ago. I intended to use this image for printing on sheet metal using liquid photo emulsion back then, but I never did. With that process in mind, I intentionally over-exposed and over-developed this negative 2 ~ 3 stops in order to increase the image contrast. When I test printed this image, the highlight (her face) was unfortunately way too dense and I could not see any textures in there at all. I thought about using this image as a reference for a drawing a couple years ago, and I tried my best to bring back highlight textures in Photoshop with not much success. So I almost gave up on using this image. I reshot its new versions with different models a couple of times and tried to recreate the shot but I could not get the new images close enough to this original which was truer to my vision. So I finally decided to use this old original image as a reference with its warts and all. I am thinking about not drawing her eye at all, and am hoping, by doing so, I might be able to make her face look luminous. Will see...