Leni Wiener

This is where we were yesterday, when I left it to come back and look at it fresh to see what jumped out at me as being wrong:

On looking at it fresh two things jumped out as being problems that needed to be addressed:

1.  although I like the color and the pattern of the hair, it is not dark enough in value.  It really needs to be a deep dark halo around the face.  I can do this just around the face and still leave some of the textural fabric there;

2.  if the hair around the face is darkened, the eyes must be as well.  The hair cannot be darker than the eyes or the eyes will lose their drama.  Also, in looking at the eye on the light side of the face, it needs to be better defined.

The changes from here on are subtle, but I think they make a difference.  It is important to look at the little details once the big pieces are set.  Here you can see the darkened hair at the top of her head, the darkened and better defined eyes.  In looking at it now on the screen, I can see that the defined eye on the light side needs to be just a bit rounder at the bottom, which I will do before everything is set in stone.

Right now there is no background, and I like the lightness on that side, but think it looks too balanced with the white side of the face.  The whole composition here is asymetrical, so balancing the white doesn’t cut it.

Here is that golden fabric as the background.  I love the painterly quality of this fabric, and the color lightens this side of the face, but I want to look at other options before I make a decision.

Here the same fabric is used so that the back is what shows.  I still have that painterly quality, but with a lighter value.  This may be better, but I have more to look at.

This goes in a different direction, the lighter magenta fabric will make the magenta in the face more prominent, and may help to make the background receed…

Here I have tried a bright blue silk, in the hopes that it will play nicely with the blues and still provide some contrast between the foreground and the background.  I think I can eliminate this one from consideration right away, as the blue becomes much too vibrant and therefore much too important.

It is always helpful to take digital pictures of your options and look at them on the computer screen.  Here are four, let’s discuss them one at a time:

1.  The golden background.  As much as I love this fabric, here it doesn’t do anything for me.  It just looks like an inconsistent and irrelevant choice which adds nothing.

2.  The golden fabric used on the wrong side.  I like this one, it is light (which I liked when there was no background) but not as light as the white side of the face, leaving some dimension and contrast.  It also retains the nice painterly quality, although not quite as much as the right side.  This is a contender.

3.  The magenta fabric.  This was a nice idea, and I like this as a background fabric, but now the magenta in the face becomes so prominent that it looks like a scar or a tatoo and is distracting.  So this one is also out.

4.  The blue silk.  I like the fact that it has a shine, but the color is all wrong.  It doesn’t play nicely with the other blues in the face and makes the magenta in the face look disturbing.

For now, I think I like the lighter golden background, but am not sure.  But here is when every little detail counts, so I need to make the following adjustments:

1.  round that eye on the bottom so it is a more graceful shape

2.  bring some of the very dark around the bottom of the chin to break up so much of that cross-hatch fabric.

3.  make the line of the chin more graceful

4.  fill in that funny little white valley that extends below the eye on the lighter side of the face.

5.  see what happens if I make the eyebrows darker, the same value as the eyes themselves.

tomorrow…..

Lying in bed at 2 AM (I get my most creative solutions in the middle of the night when my mind is clear of all the other stuff during the day) I decided not to try the swirly fabric positioned horizontally, but to go in a different direction.  The speckled fabric on the side of the face, which I think is very interesting, takes too much attention away from that gorgeous shape that I wanted to be center stage in the piece.  This is the graceful curving line that goes from behind the eye down the face and into the lips.  Doing it again in that fabric, however it is oriented, would not be as important as the speckled fabric around it, and therefore would be the wrong choice.  Solution?  Something the same value (because the value worked perfectly) but in that red violet I had rejected.  By using ONLY ONE of the red violet fabrics, it would take center stage and draw attention to the shape that I thought was the most important in the face.

Here is where I was yesterday.  I like where it is going, but that fabric behind the eye and down the face isn’t standing out as much as I would like.  The value, however, works just fine–darker than the face but lighter than the eye.  So it has to remain the same.

Of the red violet fabrics I tried in the beginning, this was the one that was the same value, so this is the one I tried first.  It is very strong and stops in the middle of the face, so it must be extended into the lips.

Now that strong colored line runs down farther into the face, ending almost at the bottom–so the shadow under the chin is next….

I am liking where this is going.  The strong color creates a line that runs from one side at the top in a curving interesting shape down to the bottom of the composition.  This takes away the attention from the speckled fabric of the face, and makes the whole face appear more graphic and less representational.

Adding the hair will help define the shape of the face and will help me decide if that highlight on the side of her face needs to be changed.  In the original photo, the value of the hair is the same as the value of the eyes, but I did not want to use the same fabric.  I did not want the two areas to blend together as if they were the same thing in different parts of the face.  This fabric, with the cross-hatch design on it is the same value, is also a blue with a purple under-color, and the perceived texture of the surface is reminiscent of hair.

As soon as the hair and the shadow under her ear and around her chin goes it, the face begins to take shape–literally.  The dark value next to the white on the highlighted side of the face defines the shape of her face.

Here I have added just a touch of a golden yellow at the side of her face in hopes of lightening that side and providing color compliment to the purple/blues.  I am not sure it works.  When I get to this stage, I often find that it helps to walk away for a while and then come back.  There is a saying about getting dressed up that you should look in the mirror and take off the first thing you notice.  The same is true here.  Walking away for a while and looking at it fresh, I need to take it all in with one glance.  If something is wrong, it will jump right out at me.   That is how I will know it needs to be changed.

After evaluating the changes that needed to be made on the current piece, I went back to my stash to pull the fabrics I was going to try.

Here you can see the seven fabrics I have chosen–white is number one and the dark blue with the dots is number seven.  There is a more gradual change from each value to the next, with no real big leaps between any two.  The first three fabrics have remained the same from my failed attempt; number four is the back of a tie dye blue that was very dark, but just the right value on the back.  Number five is a wild card, I love the fabric (the purple with the lighter blue specks in it) but cannot be sure if it is too “out there” yet.  The number six fabric, the one with the swirls on it is perfect for that section around the right eye where I wanted a zinger with a lot of fluid movement.  The final one is a dark that still has some interest.

So here she is reworked.  This is coming along much better than before.  It still needs tweaking, but I feel that I am more on the right track.  What has changed:

The colors are on a single path from light to dark.  Even though there is some movement between blues and blue purples, there is no more of that red violet that was throwing everything else off.  I still love those fabrics together, so I will use them in another piece.  It is always important to remember that you can’t get every idea into every single piece.

The values are more contiguous.  Here the fabrics flow more gradually from light into dark, with no big leaps from one to the next, and allowing the lighter side to be less contrasty (but still enough) from the darker side.

The eyes show now.  In the last incarnation, the eyes were lost, but now they are much more important to the overall composition, adding the drama that the first attempt lacked.

Finally, that speckly fabric that I wasn’t sure was going to work–I think that maybe it does work.  It has a lot of movement, and it becomes even more of a zinger than the number six fabric (which was intended to be the zinger) but I think it makes the whole piece kind of interesting.  Not a “texture” that one would normally associate with skin (it looks like really bad acne) but I think it makes this much more of an artistic interpretation than a realistic portrait.  So, at least for now, it stays.   But nothing is set in stone until everything is in place and I can evaluate it all.  Then I can confidently glue the pieces in place and move forward.

Where do I go from here?  First of all, that swirly fabric (#6) around the eye and down the side of the nose to the lips doesn’t look right to me.  I had thought that using those swirly lines in a vertical position would draw the eye up and down the composition.  But now that I am looking at it, I think I will try re-cutting that piece so that the lines run horizontally and then compare it both ways.  This is when it is great to have a digital camera, so that I can make the change and then look at them side by side to see which I like best.  Even when you look at this image on the screen now, step back from the computer or squint your eyes and the image appears as it would across the room in a gallery space.  If you don’t have a digital camera (get one, they aren’t expensive anymore) you can use the back end (the reducing side) of binoculars to get an idea of what the piece looks like if you step way back.

Then I want to relook at the right side of the face, where the highlights are not quite working for me yet.  The same for the bottom under the chin.  Both of these may just be waiting for the hairline and the shape of the chin to be determined, so all of that will be evaluated at the same time.  Baby steps, but I am glad I did not just abandon it and start something else.  Slow and steady wins the race, remember?