Stephanie C. ... at last
Be it black or white, a bull's a bull.
So, confronted with El Toro Negro, the grim reminder of my recent and stunning failure to walk in the shoes of the Greatest One, I drew a white chalk grid, which you don't really need to see a picture of, then composed the face of Stephanie C.
Look how lovely she looks:
That said, there are some problems already: Most notably, while the rest of her head is tilted fifteen or so degrees to the right, her mouth--which I can tell you right now, already, without going even the smallest bit futher, is going to give me trouble--remains more or less horizontal.
Which annoys me as it took me some good time to get it right. I'm particularly taken by the curve of the upper lip as well as the little dimple where her mouth meets her cheek.
Additionally, her eye is a little bit too big for the rest of her face. This, unlike the mouth, is not so much of a problem. Also, it looks to me like she's staring off to the side, rather than right at the viewer, but that's just a matter of finetuning and won't happen until close to the end.
I am giving some consideration to checkerboarding the background, alternating black (which is already there) and dark blue, while at the same time having the left side of the painting--which is all black in her photo, also start in blue.
None of which makes too much sense when you discuss it in the abstract, and may not make any sense even after I execute the idea, but that's the thinking to date.
For those of you who can't be bothered to look in the July archives for "Coming Soon, Stephanie C.", here is the picture from which I am working.
The actual photo is a tighter crop of this one. Regardless, you can see from this shot that the woman herself is considerably leaner than the black and white sketch. This, too, doesn't worry me. Chalk always adds ten pounds. We'll sort that out as things unfold.
So, confronted with El Toro Negro, the grim reminder of my recent and stunning failure to walk in the shoes of the Greatest One, I drew a white chalk grid, which you don't really need to see a picture of, then composed the face of Stephanie C.
Look how lovely she looks:
That said, there are some problems already: Most notably, while the rest of her head is tilted fifteen or so degrees to the right, her mouth--which I can tell you right now, already, without going even the smallest bit futher, is going to give me trouble--remains more or less horizontal.
Which annoys me as it took me some good time to get it right. I'm particularly taken by the curve of the upper lip as well as the little dimple where her mouth meets her cheek.
Additionally, her eye is a little bit too big for the rest of her face. This, unlike the mouth, is not so much of a problem. Also, it looks to me like she's staring off to the side, rather than right at the viewer, but that's just a matter of finetuning and won't happen until close to the end.
I am giving some consideration to checkerboarding the background, alternating black (which is already there) and dark blue, while at the same time having the left side of the painting--which is all black in her photo, also start in blue.
None of which makes too much sense when you discuss it in the abstract, and may not make any sense even after I execute the idea, but that's the thinking to date.
For those of you who can't be bothered to look in the July archives for "Coming Soon, Stephanie C.", here is the picture from which I am working.
The actual photo is a tighter crop of this one. Regardless, you can see from this shot that the woman herself is considerably leaner than the black and white sketch. This, too, doesn't worry me. Chalk always adds ten pounds. We'll sort that out as things unfold.
posted by Geoffrey at 12:22 PM
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