Ingrid Bergman

In my ever quest for finding styles and new ways of rendering I found myself challenged by this picture of Ingrid Bergman, famous Swedish-American moviestar and celebrity of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and part of the 1970s. The reference picture appealed to me because it showed great midtones and soft gradients, something every portrait artist is very fond of. But what could I possibly add to an already great work of art?

Surrealism for a Change

Since I did a lot of cubist portraits before I tried some surrealism for a change since that style I also employed before I start doing cubism some years ago. The last one was my graphite pencil drawing Bette Davis (Sans Titre – 27-02-16) and that one still was cubistic. But what could I with Ingrid that would turn out to become a surrealistic portrait?

Casablanca

Then, all of a sudden, I saw a desert appear in her hairdo. In general one thing leads to another and association the desert with…, of course camels! I added some and we are back in Casablanca again. Lo en behold, my romanticised image of Ingrid but without Humphrey Bogart.

Click here to read about the principle of ambiguous images as explained in my post ‘Gaia – 16-03-16’.

Click here to read about the sale of a printable of this artwork to an American collector.

Graphite pencil drawing (Pentel 0.5 mm, 3B) on Canson Bristol paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm – A4 format)

Artist: Corné Akkers