Monday, June 18, 2007

In a Georgian Way (sort of)


Georgia O'Keeffe was a master of many things, all of which combined to make her a legend in her own time and beyond. She was a master of the simple (or simplifying), of recognising and capturing beauty, of emphasis, of notan...

I've had a few rounds with flowers this month, but not to great effect. So, I decided to try and move some of her ideas over into my more usual arena - portraits. I knew exactly the expression I wanted to capture. I wanted to convey the pure wonder and joy that my sons have about all that is around them. There is a photo of one of my sons, his head knocked back, with exactly that sort of expression on his face.

And thus above you have my attempt to capture a simple beauty of joy and wonder in an O'Keeffe upclose sort of way. Do you think I captured it?

I have thoughts of working this in colored pencils, as a sort of color theory lesson. We'll see.

2 comments:

Making A Mark said...

My goodness - what a difficult task - translating all of this into portraiture!

I think you've caught the expression. However I'm just wondering whether having lines 'just' touching causes problems in 'harmonic' term. Try reframing and see what happens if you don't have the chin and the eye 'just' touching the edges.

Rose Welty said...

I'm only seeking to let notan influence me, I'm not actually going to achieve it! :-)

I think you are right about the framing. I went round and round with that. It seemed that the face lost expression with a wider cut for some reason. The original is off to a happy new owner, but I can play around some more, especially if I do more with it.