Arianna Trio, 2017
I wanted to paint this photo because of the color and expression. It just makes me want to laugh thinking that she probably was laughing while this shot was taken. That's just good photography and excites me to paint a series of that type of work.
Arianna Abstract, 2017
Firstly, the abstract. I wanted to paint an abstract to kick off the paintings. Actually I never planned more than one, but it made the most sense to me to have this in a series of 3. I wanted to push the abstract limits a little to see if I could create something interesting using different rules. This one was purely hair, orange and blue in the closest shape I could get them to the real thing.
Arianna Digital Fragmentation, 2017
The digital fragmentation happened naturally as I found a scratched digital brush and used that. I found that just doing the basic shapes and filling them with the same color created this edgy, but full feeling piece of art.
Arianna Minimalist
Just painting shapes that looked real wasn't enough, so I thought how can I represent what's going on even more simplified. The hair would be just two straight diagonal lines, and the colors would just be two blotches in the places that they were in the photo. Simple... this was done with an artists brush pen.
You can tell the time it took in these based on the process video. I'm not sure how much it speeds them up, but the shortest one was probably 10 minutes, longest, 1.5 hours.
Arianna Abstract, 2017 Process Video
Arianna Digital Fragmentation, 2017 Process Video
Arianna Minimalist Process Video
Original Arianna
This is a funny photo. Not only is it beautifully shot... amazing colors, and expression. The fact that she's covering her face lends it to any emotion. I think she's smiling or laughing which is why she is covering her face in this photo. The oranges balance so smoothly with the blue. Often I leave the background out of the portraits but this complemented the hair and the sweater color so well.
Interpretation and Creative Expression
It's all about stylistic interpretation. I wasn't satisfied after making the abstract version of this photo. I wanted to push the idea to something more abstract... shapes simplified in the minimalist version, or color and form simplified in the fragmented version.
It was a lot of fun to figure out who I could show it in a similar way but have it based on a different concept. This leads me back to limitations. I always set limitations to make a piece of art. With the abstract series, I don't paint eyes, or anything skin... Just hair since it feels outside of the body and the lip color. Other than that, the background, the clothing and accessories can be painted in whatever simple form they need to be. Usually the painting almost creates itself using these rules.
Steemians, what do you think of the three versions??? Please upvote, comment and resteem!
