Introduction

In homage to the Courageous Women who have impacted my life and work, I create their portraits using a variety of techniques, including collage. Here is a window into my thinking behind the series.

I begin by Researching the bold women artists who inspire me

I start each portrait by revisiting and reading about the work/writing of these women artists on Wikipedia. I read their original texts, listen to interviews, radio recordings, and listen to their albums. Then I Google search images of these women’s faces and search to find the “aha” photograph, the expression I’m going to portray. My first subject was Virginia Woolf, whose feminist essay A Room of One's Own examines women's role in literature.

I Prepare a personalized background for each portrait

Sometimes I write quotes or titles of their work with crayons on the paper or canvas board that I’m going to use for the portrait, as a first layer of background, then paint over them in watercolor, illustration inks or acrylics. In the case of the Portrait of Frida Khalo above, I first wrote Frida’s family tree names, husband, and lovers. Other times, I just choose a background color that seems fit to the woman’s aura.

I loosely sketch the women’s faces

I make a very fast sketch in pencil by looking at the photo on my computer screen and loosely marking the features of the woman. I draw the finer details of the face with illustration markers which have a bolder trace.

It’s time to build the layers of the Collage

Once my basic drawing is done, I go through my archive of found papers and magazine clippings until I find the right colors, motifs and textures for the portraits. When possible I use images of the person’s book, album, studio... I cut up these collage papers and stick them on the support in order to merge the drawing and collage. When I cannot find the exact images in my found materials, I draw the visual elements that are symbolic, in the case of this Portrait of Frida Khalo, I drew a black hummingbird (the symbol in her own painting of death of a love relationship with Diego Rivera), a skull symbolizing Santa Muerte, and a Mexican heart. These are all elements present in Frida’s iconography.

Painting brings texture and color to the final work

The last phase of the portraits is also a very intuitive use of paints (watercolor, illustration inks, or oil paints) to integrate the different layers together and add color washes and splatters.

If you would like to commission a portrait of someone well-known, or who inspires you personally, feel free to contact me to discuss how it works.

Making a Courageous Woman Portrait