Tag: pen-ink

“Mary Louise Kelly”

I was asked if I could work up a portrait of Mary Louise Kelly, who has recently been in the news due to an off-the-record interaction with some political ass clown. I was sent a link to a Vogue article that included this photograph by Katarina Price and liked it because it was one of the only pictures I could find where she isn’t smiling. Smiling wasn’t going to be a good look for the assignment. Lucky for me, Katarina Price released this image for publishing and remixing under the Creative Commons license. The stipulations are that any derivative work must also be published under the same or similar share-alike Creative Commons license.

I opened the image on an iPad and set it on the ground about four feet away from me and sketched freehand. I got a pretty good likeness but thought I was a little bit off. Something as simple and unnoticeable as rotating the sketch a degree or two can throw things off.

The finished file was going to have to be digital, so I brought the photograph and my initial sketch into Procreate and lined them up to see where I had gone wrong. I was surprised at just how much of the freehand sketch lined up with the image, but also saw immediately where I had missed in the angle/shape of the nose and crucial relationship of eyes/nose.

Doing the initial sketch gave me a sense of what worked, the kinds of lines I wanted to use, and familiarity with the subject. Using the photo reference directly under my line work afforded me the opportunity to trace an accurate likeness. I chose to simplify the clothing in order to emphasize the face. Thicker outlines and eliminating the texture make the bust feel much more solid and seems to transition better to the intended typography below.