Drawing From a Painting

One of my courses this past spring semester was Studio Arts 2D 12, in which I created many drawings and art pieces while learning more about elements of art, genres of art, and artistic expression. I created my own project within this course to motivate me to work on a piece that was unique, challenging, and out of my comfort zone. I decided to draw my interpretation of a detail from a classical painting. (I’ve done something similar to this before – see my post Emotions in Art.)

The painter Karl Bryullov created his cinematic painting The Last Day of Pompeii in the years 1830 to 1833. It’s a very dramatic piece filled with emotion and beautiful tragedy. The more I studied it, the more engrossed I became. I’m continually amazed at the detail and realism captured within the paint. The detail, portrayal of nature, and intensity of Pompeii are my favourite parts of the whole.

I discovered it from looking up classical art and finding a close-up of one of the faces from the painting (see below): three-quarters of a woman’s face shown, with so much pure feeling and sorrow on her face it took my breath away. I decided I wanted to try drawing her. Thus I hurried to find the complete work she originated from and the maker.

First I started out with drawing a box that was the exact size of the image as it showed on my laptop.

This helped me figure out the scale and proportions easily; I sketched in the eyes, mouth, eyebrows, nose, and shadows in approximate places while I measured my reference image to make sure everything was proportionate and true to the original.

Then I began working on making the drawing more and more detailed. Adding the darkest parts of the piece (the hair, eyebrows, and shading on the face) helped me understand how I could create more depth.

I continually added shadows to build up their intensity, as well as compared my drawing to the original to see how I was doing with keeping it realistic and alike.

I drew the majority of this piece in one day and felt by the end of the drawing session that I badly needed a break because I was getting too nitpicky and uncertain about it (the image above was where I ended). When I came back to work on it after a few days, I was able to see much more clearly what things needed to be adjusted. This is why the image above and below have a quite drastic difference between them. I softened the outlines, tweaked the lips and the nose, and smoothed and deepened shadows all over the face.

Finally, I took my white gel pen and made bright white highlights on the eyes, nose, bottom lip, and just a touch in the tear trough. I feel this gave the drawing even more depth and detail. Also, I took this image below in the best lighting I could find, which is why it appears so much darker and contrasted than the process drawings.

It’s easier to see the changes between each drawing below:

I’m happy with how my drawing turned out. I know it doesn’t look exactly like the original woman featured in Bryullov’s The Last Day of Pompeii, but I wasn’t trying to replicate it exactly – I’m glad my own touches are noticeable. I still have much to learn about art and this project taught me more about proportions, angles, lighting, emotion and expression, and tones and values. I feel that my drawing conveys an intense and intriguing emotion: melancholy, fear, perhaps even confusion. This was my intent.