Portraits, Paintings,Prints and art instruction by the artist John Earl Entrekin

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Monday, January 26 2009

First Stage of Natasha Waking.

These few posts will be about the final painting I did of Natasha. This was written some time ago as I was working on the painting.

I have often enjoyed watching the way the sun hits her fair skin when she wakes in the morning, or sometimes it is afternoon, but she does wake. (for her sleeping is an art form) I have wanted to start a series of paintings of her with that lighting for some time. The other day I had her just sort of sit in bed for me while I took a large number of photos. Digital cameras are a great boon to my work. No more spending a day in a darkroom.

She did love to sleep and usually slept until noon. When she woke she was not really awake for quite a while. I liked the light in this painting as well as the mood. She was a very pretty young girl of 23. When she woke she had a little girl look about her.

The painting is 20 X 20 inches on canvas. It is her getting up in the morning just as she woke. I do think it gives the soft morning look of her, the light and even the bedding. The idea was to make it look inviting, not too sexual and to give that feeling we all have of just waking up. What I struggled with was to keep the background light enough as to not give the feeling of evening or indoor lighting but still show it dark enough to enhance her fair and very pure skin.

I printed out a few of them and then did some sketches. The next morning I got her to just stay there a while for me to do a few quick sketches from life to better understand what I wanted to see in the painting.

When I start a painting as you may have heard me write, (can you hear a person write?) I have certain goals in mind. With this one I wanted to feel the morning light. Cool and clear but warming to the skin. She has perfect clear and fair skin so I want this to show that in a way that the viewer can almost feel the delicate texture of her body. The other thing is the mood.

She is just waking and there isn’t much on her mind but just experiencing being up and alive. It is morning and she isn’t quite fully awake yet. She is as innocent right at this moment as she will be all day. There is an unexplainable beauty and childlike purity about any woman of any age at that moment in the morning. A time when as a man I only want to protect and adore. That is what I want to show.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the background. If I go dark it may lose the look of morning but I don’t want the light to take away from the soft fair creamy look of the skin.

Posted by: John Entrekin AT 05:36 pm | Permalink | 0 Comments | Email

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