The days leading up to my arrival here in Tokyo have been so hectic. No time to write, let alone paint. With little chance to paint here (I didn’t bring my supplies, just a sketchbook and pen) but some spare time to blog, now would be the good time to catch up on writing about some of my work I have yet gotten around to sharing. One of them from more than a year ago! And here is a classic: An assignment from our Tuesday evening painting classes in which we were to create our own version of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. And naturally, what came tp mind? Little One of course!
By chance, I happened to make a digital Procreate painting of this some months before following a visit to Vermeer’s exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in April 2023. If you recall The Pearl Earring. I was intending to make a proper canvas painting at some point later, so a great coincidence that this project came up!
The Process
A medium-sized 50x30cm framed canvas was chosen for this project, all in acrylic paint. As I worked on and off it during my weekly class and then went on vacation for a few weeks and resumed, it may be easier just to describe the process very briefly. Good job I took some photos to illustrate the progress! First the background which started with covering the canvas with black, then once dry, with green using a brayer. This was then followed by a sketch using pastel stick which is erasable for any changes. And the rest just followed.
Adding Variation
At some point point, I was not happy with the shape of her face as it looked a bit too “horsey” and hence I made it more angular. Now that’s better! Another challenge was giving more dimension to the subject with the light and shade, but of course I ended up cheating a bit by referring to the original Vermeer’s painting. To enhance my piece and give some variation to the original, I decided to paint the gown a deep gold and introduced light gold as highlights for the headscarf. The painting was then concluded with eyelashes for that kawaii touch, along with embellishing the earring with a pearlescent glass button. Et voilà!
What fun that was! And quite a lucky chance that this was indeed our class assignment as I was hoping to make a canvas painting after having done a digital painting for this classic piece featuring Little One. Sadly, our painting classes got discontinued though. Such a pity as it gave me such a motivation to challenge myself creatively. That said, writing about this piece has now given me that motivation! And now I have something to look forward to doing once I’m back home in the Netherlands soon….
My Kawaii Quarter 