Timelapse. A painterly portrait of a girl in a headscarf

Hi!

Making a painterly piece is an interesting subject. You can go about it in different ways: from the mass, from the drawing, from one section, or by working everything up gradually at once.

In this piece a quick sketch was made first, and then one "section" was picked — the head. I laid in its general value, and then put strokes over that value which helped sculpt the form and corrected the drawing at the same time. At the early stage the drawing served as a compositional idea more than it claimed any realism, which I went after a bit later.

Once the head was opened up, I took on the whole format, working the form of the body and the hands up stage by stage and coming back to the head. Painted hands are a story of their own. When you draw them, it’s important to catch an expressive shape from life.

The folds of the clothing are rhythms and structures. Since they change every 45 minutes, they have to be resolved together and all at once, picking a good arrangement from one of the sessions.

After that you have to look at how the elements of the picture relate to each other: next to a very detailed head it’s important to simplify everything a little to create more contrast. Every corner of the composition should be filled differently, and either light or dark should dominate, so that nothing ends up equal.

Thanks for the support!