Creating Sans Titre - 31-03-25 (Jean Muir)

Website link: https://corneakkers.com/sans-titre-31-03-25-jean-muir/
Print: https://corneakkers.com/print-sans-titre-31-03-24-jean-muir/
Printable: https://corneakkers.com/downloads/print-sans-titre-31-03-25-jean-muir/

Monotyping-like

This colored pencil drawing ‘Sans Titre – 31-03-25’ depicts American celebrity moviestar Jean Muir from the 1930s. Cubism meets art deco glory in yellow. After my latest drawing endeavours on colored Aurora paper I thought I’d try one out for my Sans Titre Series. Somewhere I had a vague idea to do a very styled monotyping-like art deco styled image. Another reason is that such coloured paper is very striking and I like what it did to Neo Deco – 24-03-25. Finding a classic deco actress wasn’t too difficult. For years Ms Muir was on my waiting list and soon I found a great picture as artistic motif.

Measuring Out

Finding the right proportions of the head was easy. Just about 1.3 cubes in height to box in the total face. Calculating fingers was a bit more difficult. So many forms and of course some needed styling. What I wanted was to keep forms open. The strong yellow background I found pleasantly compelling enough not to hatch things up to a total blackness. The reference picture was one where Jean came popping out of the darkness. That wasn’t my choice though. However pleasant these chiaroscuro overloaded pictures appear in my tonally trained eyes, not this time! Instead I chose to keep planes open. Therefor I drew some slanted powerlines on the sides of her head. If you look carefully I let them approach to the point of singularity to the curve of her head.

Openess

The result is openess structured by very dark pockets of graphite and white islands. The yellow serves as the midtone. As to the lower part of the drawing underneath her hands I kept it quite simple, not overproducing it. All in all I thought those hands didn’t need a depiction of her pulses or sleeves for that matter. The imagination of the viewer will fill in the gaps. A fun litte project to do, done under 5 hours.

Colored pencil drawing on Aurora Coloured Drawing paper (21 x 29.7 x 0.1 cm - A4 format)
Artist: Corné Akkers