Behind the scenes

This won’t be a complex composition I’m just doing a portrait.

I’m using this screencap of Cora Crawley as reference:

So the first thing I do is crop her out and decide how she’s going to fill the space. 

Things I need to consider: Her eyes add drama and direction. The lighting is pretty soft, so it’s not telling much of a story, but her expression definitely is.

So because all the interest is in her eyes, I don’t want to space around her to compete with that. But I don’t want a lack of space around her, either, because if she’s framed too tight, there will be too much tension, and I don’t want the tension of the space to compete with her, either.

So a balanced amount of space, yeah? I’ll let the weight of her expression carry the portrait, which is pretty typical of everything I paint; I like when my portraits are balanced so that the quietness and subtlety of someone’s expression stands out:

Framed this way, we focus immediately on her expression. This is the framing I want!

Now I need to decide how to further bring out her character.

Her expression suggests two things to me about her character: concern (I know that Cora is a very compassionate woman and loving mother, and I can see some of that in her face), and aloofness (I know she’s a wealthy Countess with upperclass mannerisms, and I can see that not only in her face but in her poise, clothes, and jewelry).

How do I convey both of these things with color?

For one thing, her dress, necklace, and lipstick are all garnet red, but her eyes are blue (you can’t see it, but I know they are). I want this drawing to look expensive and out of reach, like a jewel. But I also want it to be warm and soft, like her personality.

So my first thought is: a warm background would flatter her dress and contrast with her eyes and porcelain complexion. But a cool background would make us “search” for the warmth in her aloof countenance.

Which one do I do?

I’m going to compromise and do both:

The pink is cooler than her dress, which flatters the “wealth” of the portrait, but the orange is warmer and softens the wealth. It’s subtle, but these two colors will add complexity without competing with the figure.

Now, I need to do a sketch. So here’s my next step:

This looks simple, but this is the most important part of any portrait and also the most difficult. Everything will depend on these few lines.

After I do a sketch, I paste it over my reference to make sure it’s accurate:

(Btw the half background of pink is there so I can see the difference between the reds in the reference and will be used later)

As you can see above, my sketch doesn’t quite line up. I did pretty good, but I can fix it, so below, I marked a few of the places where I need to do corrections in yellow:

I might repeat this process a dozen times. You can of course trace, and that’s perfectly fine, but I like to do it by eye so that I learn how to measure (so I don’t need to trace). But tracing is okay too!

Anyway, here’s my sketch back in my drawing space with more details and the corrections:

So now I have a base to begin painting! And that’s how I set up a portrait.

The process of developing a palette is trickier, so I’ll save that for another time.

“One of my favorite filmmakers, especially when I was in film school, is Lynne Ramsay. And Lynne’s first few films, she was notorious for blending actors and non-actors in Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar. And she always spoke about the tension that arises where the trained actor cannot rely on old tricks, cannot rely on muscle memory to react to the person they’re in scene with. So it was something I spoke to James [Laxton, the cinematographer] about because we knew our shooting style would be altered a little bit; when you’re working with a non-actor you can’t be as rigorous with some of the technical aspects of the process… We did a lot of work searching for non-actors that we felt like we could trust in scene to give us what we needed as characters not just the people they were. But I didn’t direct them any differently than I did the others. There was something about speaking to Alex Hibbert that was different than speaking to Mahershala Ali. But I tried to use the same voice. Over the course of the project - who was a non-actor, who was an actor - that line become blurred to the point of non-distinction… My direction to a guy like Alex Hibbert, who’s never acted before, who plays Little in the first story was maybe, to be honest, more direct than it was to the actors. Rather than talking about emotions or meaning, I’d talked to Alex about what we needed to do. And then it got to the point where I would start telling him and then he’d be like, “No, no, no, no, no, I got it, I got it Barry.” Just a brilliant kid.”

SURREALIST WOMEN IN THEIR STUDIOS, from top to bottom:

Eileen Agar

Dorothea Tanning

Kay Sage

Remedios Varo

Leonora Carrington 

Leonor Fini