With the original painting beginning in the winter of 2019, and bringing it to this latest form in the spring of 2023, this is most likely my longest spanning project.
And, in all honesty, there is still more detail and depth that I plan on adding. This may very well still be a work in progress that I will return to after another reprieve.
This painting originated as the final project for my oil portrait painting class in my junior year at VCU. I was happy with the finished piece at the time, though my limited oil painting experience and the rushed work of a final project left something to be desired. It became my goal to spend the time with the painting that it deserved and create a new, vibrant background that would transform the piece.
At the beginning of 2023, I started to design what this new iteration of the painting would look like. I wanted higher realism in the figure and a background that felt like a lush, fantasy forest that was still grounded with observed detail.
I gathered reference photos from hikes and walks I’ve taken, finding the tiny moments that always catch my eye and I knew I wanted to include. These moments would become the trees, stones, ferns, moss, and fallen leaves that would surround the figure. I also took new photos of myself. First the hands; giving the top hand a more organic pose, and bringing the lower hand back into the frame of the painting. And then the hair; I needed my hair in the sunlight, recapturing the depth and details that were lost in the shadows of the original reference image.
The next step was a digital sketch done in Photoshop. Working around the existing figure in the painting (and the new hand reference), I completely replaced the background with an idyllic autumnal forest.
Then the actual painting began. After taking plenty of pictures of the original version, I had to take the jump and paint over the entire background. This was slightly heartbreaking in its own way, but I could instantly see the potential the figure had when it was pulled away from the rushed and cold background I had first done.
Painting was slow going after that. Shifting back and forth between the figure and the environment, I built up the form and detail of each aspect in short bursts of work for the next four months. When focused on the figure I worked on fixing the proportions of the shoulders, building the hands, creating the pattern of the shirt, giving the face emotion, and finding the shadows and highlights of the hair. With the environment there was a whole different set of challenges. While I had reference for the individual details, I then had to fit all of those pieces together into a single, lived-in moment. At every stage of painting the background I needed to remind myself that a lush, overflow of detail and texture was the goal I was striving for in this piece. Another layer could be added, a deeper shadow, a more delicate highlight.
And finally, the ring on my hand is an antique glass eye I fell in love with in the Autumn before I re- started the painting. It felt like it belonged in this imagined forest scene, being just eerie and beautiful enough to be captured in the painting. That sense of a surreal forest also came to me as I worked on the piece, re-listening to the Raven Cycle audiobooks and their descriptions of old Virginia forests that matched my own photos.
That world of magical realism inspired the introduction of some curious details into the scene. And this is where I will continue the next time I work on this painting. The hints of ladybugs crawling over the hands and outlines of eyes in the knots of the trees are details I have yet to complete. I look forward to coming back to this painting again in the future, seeing where it will go then and what else I can build.
Written October 2024