Show Your Face in the Style of ...

...an established artist.

That is the "challenge" over at lovely Kim Dellow's "Show Your Face" community event for November.

And this is my share for starters: 

When I think about painted faces the portraits by Amedeo Modigliani are the first ones that come to my mind in the very first place. I love how simple his portraits look and yet he has managed to capture a very intimate moment where the portrayed person's face allows us to take a look behind the facade and reveals something deeply intimate or even the persons' very natures.

For some examples that have especially impressed me click HERE or HERE.

Being way too over-focussed on a natural look with my drawings or paintings I challenged myself this time to try and follow Modigliani's way of elongating the faces' proportions (but still let them feel quite natural and touching instead of artificial).

I also love his way of applying the paint to the canvas...but as it is one step at a time when trying something new, I decided to just focus on this one aspect for a start.

I needed a photograph with a person whose facial expression was somehow special, meaningful, touching...and I found a picture of a guy in a home decor magazine who is at work in his pottery studio and obviously loving what he does. So my aim was to try capture the wonderful expression on his face - as this is what makes Modigliani's portraits so wonderful to me.

 I used a (very) small canvas for my experiment and made a rough and quick sketch with a soft pencil first.
 

Then I went in with a fine tip brush and did the black lines first. I knew that some would get lost during the painting process anyway so I didn't spend too much time on being very precise with that step.

Next I started to build up layers of paint, trying to use colour tones close to the ones Modigliani used with his portraits.

As you can see I didn't stick to the colours of the photograph. I focussed on the face and on trying to let go of my usual over-accurateness that most of the time "kills" my paintings or drawings. I think I could have been even more brave with elongating the proportions....but hey - maybe a second try will get me (and the portrait) closer to that Modigliani feel. ;)

I am super curious about the other faces that will be shared over at Kim's place this time!

Hugs and happy crafting,

Claudia x