Speaking about layers and technique, I have developed my own way to paint what we in italian call “incarnato” (the skin colour) with different layers (if I find the time, I will document this in a future post for the last painting I made for Bodil & Rune, coming soon on the website), but this time as I mentionned before I will try a new technique for the painting I’m beginning now, Mara’s portrait commissionned by Fabrizio, where I will use both oil paints and white egg tempera. For now I’m only at the sketch !

Be sure to go and see it whole !

If interested, read more about Matilde’s portrait in this previous post.

I just updated the Portraiture Gallery with 2 new images, Janelle’s rabbit Sixty and the little Lavinia (sister of the previously portrayed Greta and Lucia).

The process is very stimulating and funny : she sent me some pictures of her, then she gave me some interesting inputs about what she’d like me to integrate in the portrait to reveal parts of her personnality. Between those elements are a poem, and things she likes and which she identifies with.
Some of those elements can even be seen in her life choices.

At this point I made a “synthesis” of the elements and let intuition guide me to produce a sketch. In this case, she is convinced that she will like my style, so she would prefer the final painting to be a surprise.

That’s why I just showed her the pose “I put her on”, and asked her a photo in that pose, but I didn’t show her the whole of the sketch (which I cannot publish, not to spoil the surprise!).

I must say that like to do strictly realistic portraits, as sometimes I am asked to, but I find this kind of portraits funnier and so much more stimulating!

This because there is a personal interaction with the subject to be portayed, and with its interiority (not only with the physical part of the person). Besides, it allows more room for my personal creativity and interpretation.

I call those “fantasy portraits”, not necessarily because they are in Fantasy STYLE, but because they involve the use of my own intuition and fantasy.

Perhaps I could find a better and more accurate definition for them…maybe I should call them “intuitive portraits”? or “portraits with a soul”? or maybe they’re simply “my own style portraits”