Making The Virgin Bride
In first term our class had to create a piece using only pastels. Having a sort of obsession with mixing pop culture and religion, I came up with the wacky idea of the Bride of Frankenstein as the Virgin Mary, or Queen of Heaven. It took just over a month, and I'm very happy with the results.
First I started out with a very rough sketch in my skin tone, which was simply grey. I decided that I didn't want a flesh color, but instead wanted to mix the old-fashion black and white film features with the vibrant colors of what we see in modern bibles of Mary. As you can see, this rough sketch has many mistakes: the hair is too short, the halo uneven, the drapery not quite what I want. But the good thing about pastels is that they wipe away easily, although they smudge, they are easy to cover in three to four layers. I also started to block in the skin tones and a bit of highlighting on the forehead.
Now here I decided to have the Bride pose in a gesture we often see Marry in, where she motions to the heart with the Crown of Thorns while her opposite hand is in a gesture of prayer. I've darkened where I want the fabric to fold and how I want the bandages wrapped around her wrists. I've changed her cloak to be thrown over one shoulder, instead of both, so the red dress will be more prominent. I began to block in the hair with black, and beginning the streaks of white which the Bride is famous for. Her nose looks odd because I have just started to touch on the highlighting, and when I finish the eyes and shadows, it will look normal again.
This part is when I began to get frustrated. Towards the bottom of her blue robe that the red was blending into the blue to create a murky color, which isn't that appealing. I tried to blend and blend and blend and the pastels just weren't working for me. So I tried to move up to the face and soften out the shadow of her jawbone, and widen her eyes, and thin out her nose. I darkened the forehead, thinking I'd come to the highlights later. The hands are smudge, as you can see, because I got frustrated with the blending red into the grey so I kind of just smudged it around. Sometimes, as an artist, you just have to let your anger out on your piece!
So, here is when I chose the wrong background color. I wasn't thinking at all! Of course the color harmony isn't good by any means, and as you can see later on, I fix it. Still, I have trouble blending the red robe. I start to outline the hands, and try to have her mouth smile a bit more. I outline the heart with yellow and orange lines to give the impression of a radiating love. I outline her robes in a darker blue than the rest of her robe, still not getting the exact effect I was looking for. If you haven't noticed by now, art takes a lot of experimenting. Its it's own science.
Alright, here is where I fix the background! I changed it from the awful looking purple to the yellow. I fill in the halo with a very light blue, and I start to highlight the skin some more, focusing on the color bone. I darken the eyelids to give the appearance of a strong, straight-on gaze, and I'm happy with it. With a few more color hues on the robe, I call it good...
And voila! I decided to go with a more harsh highlighting on the robes, and harsher shading on the skin, focusing more on the collarbone, once again. I really admire the intensity of the colors, it was such a fun piece to do, even if it was a long process of building up layers.
Here is a close up of her face...
And a photo of me at the beginning...
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| The Virgin Bride by Ryann Jensen |
Word Count: 700
