Mme. Matisse

On Jenny Manno's Next JENeration Art page, there is a challenge that uses old masters' paintings as inspiration for fairies. (You may recall my Van Gogh-inspired gal with wings a few weeks back.) This week it was Matisse, and although some did fairies, others were just inspired by the master to do something in a similar vein. There were a lot of portraits that mimicked his portrait of his wife, Amelie.

The thing to know about Matisse is that he painted in the Fauve style, which substituted colors, warm and cold, for shadow. So you will find flat planes of color rather than nuanced light and shade in most of his paintings. Here is his rendition of the Missus, and although he used warm colors on one side of the face and cool on the other, that is the extent of the direct or reflected light, except for a few darker shades in her hair and the scribble of blue behind her shoulder. The portrait is well known for "the green line" down her nose, which divided light from shade.

The photograph from which he worked, however, had a lot of light and shadow reflected in Amelie's face, and I decided to make a more realistic painting of her, but using only my black Uniball pen and the water-soluble shadows I created from that for her face. Then I gave her hair and dress some nuance and color by bleeding the Elegant Writer around to extract its pinks, purples, and greens from the applied black line.

Some of the Elegant Writer intruded perforce upon her forehead, so then I carried it through the shadow under her chin that merges with her dress, just for continuity. 

I gave one nod to Matisse by giving her a tri-colored background reflecting the Elegant Writer colors, although I might have liked it better plain. Too late!

Here's my portrait of Mme. Amelie Matisse. She looks perhaps a tiny bit younger, and not quite so glum, but I think I captured her.

"Mme Matisse"—pencil, Uniball pen, Elegant Writer, watercolor, gel pen, on Fluid 140-lb. coldpress watercolor paper, 8.25x11 inches.