Judith Halverstine
I was taking a look at this image in my stacks. I hated it. It was part of a series of studies before I honed in on the Etude idea. Something felt horribly off. Its not just this one picture, I have all of these drawings that are like malformed horrible soul dead blahs. I feel like I lost my way around 2015 and the decade of work between that and 2025 was 90% gonorrhea of the mind.
Its really weird, but adding the text changed the whole thing for me. Not sure why. The changes aren’t huge at all between #1 and #2 but it made all the difference in the world.
Before Session #1
This picture to me felt dead. I was getting physically ill looking at it.
After Session #1
Text was added. Muddy layer of water color shadow applied. A bit of extra color applied… totally different picture.
I am really liking it just like this. Is that all it needed?
I don’t feel like this is an ‘Etude’, part of that series. I think this would fit in better with a series of portraits of people I know or people who have commissioned a portrait.
The act of adding text and putting this character into the ATLAS “Des Personnes” made me give this person a little bit of a story in my mind. Who is this person? That ATLAS is supposed to represent real people and I’m subverting it before I even add my first real person to the series.
Direction: Click on an image. Use the </> buttons to view the development process.