Natural Beauty

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Darja Collin – 29-09-22’ follows directly after the previous one of her. I already did a portrait of her some days earlier. Sometimes a beauty by the likes of her simply can’t let go. Doing a series of her it almost becomes an obsession. Strangely only now I finally can step in Slauerhoff’s shoes and feel what it is like to love her. Not a strange tale because she is a looker. But there’s more. Artist like me are not attracted to women because we are horny devils. Maybe we are but in her particular case I’m also attracted to her features in an artistic way. Something to do with the concept of the quan for those who saw Jerry Maguire. It’s that totality of beauty, attraction, artistic feel, potential and creativity. Enough said.

Girlish Look

The previous portrait was ‘en profil’ and I consider it a prestudy to this one. I was not completely satisfied with that drawing. Even though it resembled the reference picture the scare amount of photos showed different aspects of her facial expression. ‘En face’ she looks quite different and there some kind of girlish beauty lies. She has these roundly shaped eyes and a conal shaped face that drives men like me mad. The promise of a young girl, shaped in a grown-up body. I almost feel like Renoir who depicted women the same way. No, no, not feeling guilty!

Tonality

The reference picture was a bit pale so I beefed up the tonality considerably, increasing it dramatically. After that I blocked in her facial features by blocks of dark planes. Those are the dress below and the hair parts left and right. I liked doing the hairs accented with small dark strokes, contrasting the face. Now I come to think of it: It’s time to close this series before it becomes a true obsession.

Click here to read about the sale of a print to an American collector through Artpal.

Click here to read about the sale of a print to an English collector through 1stdibs.com.

Pitt Graphite Matt pencil (Faber-Castell) drawing on Fabriano Ingres paper (21 x 28.2 x 0.1 cm)

Artist: Corné Akkers

Sales info: info@corneakkers.com