Trying something more difficult now – first time the painting inspiration comes from a photograph and not from another artwork. This way I don’t have the choice of colours and strokes made in front of me, and I have to apply my own style to build a representation of reality.

I started from a photography of a woman, which was transformed in black and white to give it a different depth and connotation. I find that the composition, with her deep eyes under the hood give her a intensity I wanted to capture.

I started with a sketch on white canvas which came a bit off despite all measurements:

The first few layers were slightly discouraging, as all of her beauty was lost in rough lines and bizzarre eye proportions

Still, I didn’t give up and after many hours of soft blending and contrast I made some sense of it:

I worked on the softness of her shawl and a more natural skin color

Another round of smooth blending and increasing the contrast, while fixing her eyes:

More softblending, adding highlights, details, and fixing her chin:

As my mind was getting tired and numb after all the hours looking at her, I tried messing things up by painting some details upside down, to spot tiny angles, curves, and micro-proportions

Finally done!! I felt so good!!