Many Betties

Bettie Page became a sweet taste in my mouth so I rendered her in pastel in reds and greens. It is the first and the last one of her in pastel, whereas I put her on paper many and in oil a couple of times. The Restoration of Bettie Page – 01-04-20 is the last one in the Bettie series. Back in 2014 she was still on my menu though.

Divisionism

Although the pastel is dominantly red I still hatched in a considerable amount of green strokes in order to compensate for the heavy dosis of its complementary color. Without them the pastel would have look both too strong as boring in the long run. Even though the pastel almost is monochrome of nature it would have looked like a big lump of red. The employment of the theory of divisionism comes to one’s needs then.

Clairobscur

As a counterpart of the strong red the pastel is put in a strong chiaroscuro (clairobscur) so the body features stand out in a striking way. Consequently I had to do the same in the negative space so I repeated the light to dark gradient there but softer than in the postive form. darker around the outer skirts of the paper and lighter ajacent to the body: there she comes out, POP!

Click here to read about the sale of this art work to a German collector through singulart.com.

Click here to read about the sale of a printable to a Slovenian collector.

Pastel drawing on Canson Mi-Teintes Touch paper (47 x 62 cm)

Artist: Corné Akkers