Jenna J. Ross

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Nights over Egypt – 13-11-18’ is a special one. You see, I found this picture of Jenna J. Ross on Instagram. Surely, I liked it a lot because it was a kind of blue and dark. Now, I didn’t do adult models very often, save for the Playboy and Penthouse models in the 1980s. But hey, I was a teenager then. Now I am a man past midlife and I had another idea. What if I depict a mattrass actress not in her sexual glory but only very decent? Lately I had a vision of showing ‘the other side’ to persons by fully neglecting what they primarily stand for. Take any dictator for example. Strip him of all his extremist essentials and show the people an unexpected side. Surely, this will be shocking as hell.

The Other Side

Well, I’d better put dictators aside for a while but hey, less shocking is a pornstar. Somehow it takes me back to drawing and painting Bettie Page in a ll her aspects. Everybody had her pictures tucked away under the bed in the 1950s. However, nobody wanted to admit to that. Nowadays, porn takes up a large chunck of the internet. Abovementioned ‘other side’ is also meant as showing a more subtle side to people. Porn and dictatorships could be considered as extreme tastes. But there isn’t a dictator that hasn’t got a soft spot too. No porn star that doesn’t have feel for old fashioned romatics as well. Makes me wonder how everybody can be trapped in and by a role they (have to) play. Wasn’t Hitler truly fond of children and Churchill a loving mason in his spare time? Pornstar are true husband and wives too.

Out of Egypt

Back to Jenna’s picture. All of a sudden I found it fit for my Egypt project and decided to turn her into an Egyptian queen. I hope she will like it. The composition I kept quite simple. Only adding the pyramid and the moon in the back really. However, in the reference picture there was only a wall. Moreover, I focused merely on the complex tonal nuances. A wonderful yet strange theme to work on. Lovely!

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

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