She is melting into that on which she lies, and yet marked out from it. We look through to her and yet she is part of the frame. She is in a dream-scape that could not exist and yet we recognise it...
SO this is my day's work, and the first painting I have finished for a long time. The materials are F pencil and watercolour on Langton watercolour paper by Daler Rowney. I wanted to echo natural and artificial shapes throughout, hence the petal shape of her breast, the flower-like structure in the top left of the painting, and the window frame shapes to the right. She is taken from a May 2008 Vogue shoot of Natalia Vodianova in Russia, of which I loved the pose, the colours and style of her clothes, the beautiful balance of her face and the helmet-like hat that covers her hair. I have tried to hint at something of the Art Deco and Nouveau, two movements decades apart but unusually complimentary. I suppose you will think, as I do, that she was stunningly beautiful before I made the colours stronger and put down the paynes-grey outlines, but I couldn't leave her like this because the orange of the koi was so strong that she became a little washed out. I also wanted to make primary the area around her face and the outlines of the birds, creating a vertical sweep made from bird to bird. I was heavily influenced by iiiis' work here, and the fish and birds are taken from his book.
