Clairobscur

Every woman lneeds a celebration, especially when one sees a particular beautiful one like Bente. Once in a while I browse through posts on Instagram and often there is not much on. A lot of influencers, kitsch and occasionally some fairly good art works. Then all of a sudden I saw a great photo of a young woman I did not see before online. The principles of chiaroscuro love to portray her, so it seemed. One even could say the light and the camera were in love with her. At least I was. Therefore is was time to make a move and render her in my favorite style of rendering: roundism. I literally started this graphite pencil drawing on a whim. Wouldn’t you love those?

Straight Plains and Curved Ones

The reference picture gave me all I needed but the challenge was to add any value. Could I dissect her face into interesting cubist segments? After some deliberation I decided to use a series of straight plains and curved ones. I was attracted by the round curves in the hair as well as some straight diagonals across the face pointing upwards. I kept the sternum quite abstract and in the end decided not to hatch the lower right side to a total black, counterbalancing the central placed and upper left ligher parts. It was become a rather different portrait compared to my last one in the sans titre series. That one I consider to be quite alright. I like the diversity of and the balance in the straightness and curves in this one though. In the past I combined them on occasion but with varying degrees of success.

Click here for the build-up of the drawing.

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

Artist: Corné Akkers