Portrait: Discord Nancy

My friend Elsi responded very positively when I asked if I could make a portrait of her and sent me some photos, all of which were beautiful, but I chose this one to start with as it struck me as the most powerful image.

First I made a line visual in pencil, slightly exaggerating her features;

which I then traced and redrew in charcoal, deciding to reverse the image so that I could include her ‘beauty spot’ piercing, which was obscured in the original pose.

Having scanned it I cut out the line work in photoshop and set about playing with the ‘filling’, choosing a scan of a 70’s fabric for her hair, as it’s the right sort of colour and the pattern follows the contours well. 

I set the eraser tool to the highest setting to achieve the circular cut outs which I then misaligned in different layers to give a ‘spot light’ effect, adding an extra element to the ‘surprised’ narrative.

I chose to work with a limited palette because the hair ‘collage’ is so ‘busy’.

I then experimented with multiples, which I think work well. 

I plan to make more versions of this image using different materials for the initial drawing and also to work from some of the other photos.

A couple of weeks later

I kept adding charcoal to the drawing I developed just beyond the line visual stage and ended up with this 

Which led me to wonder, after I’d been looking at street artists for ex 1 part 4, how it would work as a purely black and white image so I made a tonal tracing and set about a pencil version

Which I then scanned and cut out in photoshop, and enhancing it with other layers and multiplication

I’ll also try cutting it out and spray painting over it...see next exercise...as well as screen printing the image.

A friend prepared the screen for me and I printed the image onto a t-shirt and paper

The paper version worked less well because there was too much ink, but I'm very happy with the t-shirt and will probably make more.