The designer Christian Lacroix, who was born in Arles in the south of France, has an illustrated memoir which includes a photograph of an Arlesian woman in traditional costume. In the nineteenth century these women were considered unusually beautiful, and from what I understand their faces resembled Roman statuary. I suppose the American version of that kind of face would be the face of Liberty (designed of course by a French guy, Auguste Bartholdi).
The photo in the Lacroix book was one inspiration for this drawing, as was Larry Rivers, an artist who used scratchy, scribbly techniques in his paintings that gave them an improvisatory feel more often associated with drawings.
I've re-worked this drawing a few times. At first the background was way too busy, so I applied some filters to make it recede, then added some of the colors from the background to the figure's skintone. Not sure how successful this is, but it was fun to reference one of Rivers' drawings and try to use the same kinds of elements. The exercise produced something I would never have come up with on my own.
Posts
