- (Acrylic Painting, not complete at this point in time)
Well, my painted version of Gertrude Kasebier’s “Miss M”, is coming right along. It’s been a little over a month since my last post on the topic and, boy, has this woman gone through some changes and transformations to reach this point.
Luckily, I did enough pre-drawing to nail down most of the figure fairly accurately, when it came down to applying it to canvas. I am thinking I am using less line in this painting (vs. some of my older acrylic pieces), because the “drawing” aspect has, for the majority, already been accomplished on paper well before paint has been applied to canvas. This is a new discipline for me and I am enjoying its results. I’m imagining in my mind: painting as “game day” and all of the drawing that goes behind it as “practice”.
I’ve enjoyed working this large, this canvas runs 36×48, so my woman here is nearly life-sized. “Drawing” has been a bit easier at this size, than the standard 8.5×11″ I was drawing/practicing on.
At this point the top-end of the painting is nearly complete: her face, the patterned background, neck and shoulders (almost done). I believe I’ve settled on the color palette within this “finished area” and hope to bring down some of those greens and peaches into the whites of her dress.
I’m struggling a bit with deciding how to treat the headboard behind my woman. In the original photo this area is pretty non-descript and a blanketed-dark. I’m imagining it should be left that way, but I’m not wanting it to “sink” behind the patterned wall either. This backboard should be something of a middle ground behind her and in front of the pattern.
When considering the patterned wall behind her, I was itching to have it command attention and almost compete with her face. The impasto/texture applied accomplishes this. I played with the idea of having her meld-in with this background but she has some definite color differences from the pattern and sticks out above it none-the-less.
I like that she is distinct, but I also enjoy that the background is also complicated, floral, feminine, and I imagine that it speaks of her personality like all of our home decorating often comments on us. I found freedom to express my own feminine side in this background and didn’t shy away from the traditional floral and uterine shapes found often in patterned drapery and old-fashioned wall papering.
