Session (M) (Patreon)

As I’ve given several insights in my process already, for those that actually read captions, here’s another one;

A couple of years ago I painted a pretty extensive series of women who I just came across on Instagram or on other platforms. Mainly insta.

I found them interesting and inspiring in various ways, but it was always about expression, sensuality, poise or promise that made them interesting.
Not the fact that they had good bodies or long legs or something else just physical.

Of most I didn’t see much more than what they posted on Instagram and we all know how uptight that platform is.
I always showed them what I did, before I posted anything, to see what they would think of it.

If they didn’t react or if they were less than happy or enthusiastic, I just changed the face and hair to someone imaginary, so that it wouldn’t be embarrassing for them.

Bodies were imaginary anyway. I wouldn’t want to ask anybody for nood pix. I hate that. There are too many that do that just for kix and giggles. Or for some hormonal urge.

It happened, really occasionally luckily, that they didn’t like it, even though the majority of my remote models loved it.
I myself have always regarded it as a huge compliment or a confirmation of their beauty and artistic appeal if you will, and most understood. Some didn’t though, and considered it as something negative. The ones that didn’t, had more impact on me, to a point where it started to make me think about it too much.

So, I stopped doing it after 30 or 40 portraits.

For me it was a way to paint something complementary without any monetary goals or other gain. Just for the heck of it, for elegance, sensuality and love of the female form.

I did consider it practise, so that I wouldn’t feel too bad about the time I invested. And it actually was practise too, because with different types and moods of models a painting has to be done differently every time. I learned from it.

On twitter I follow some of those art posters (follower collectors, really) and recently I’ve been noticing a lot of portraits of celebrities, probably made with the aid of AI.

Most of them in similar explicit poses, with similar bewbs and but(t)s and with similar lighting, even when the tagged ‘artists’ are different. Maybe they’ve been around longer and had only be found more recently by the art posters I follow, but if I hadn’t stopped painting unknown models already, I would now, because that whole AI thing has actually ruined any positive side of working with remote models for me. I think models (or the actresses as used by the AI people; like Emma Watson, Scarlet Johansson, Rachel Weisz and all other acting beauties available)are not representative for beauty anymore but a commodity or just content to gain followers. I’d be embarrassed to work with people like that. Although I did noods of people I haven’t seen like that, I tried to keep it tasteful, elegant and complimentary.

This very painting was actually part of that series I did and it wound up on the shelf, because I couldn’t (or just didn’t want to) find the time to edit it to something different. It was one of the last ones I did in 2018, for someone that actually asked directly to be in my art. She was probably expecting something different and was less than enthusiastic when I showed her this.

I have no idea what she really would have liked. She left it up to me.

It doesn’t really matter anymore. But when someone asks now, I’ll offer to do it for a serious fee.

Some people have ruined the entire concept for me.

I still use the odd remote inspiration now and again, but then only with celebs, actresses mostly, because they’ve seen much worse usually and probably won't see my work at all. Often I change it to unknown now, right after I finished the painting. Only sometimes I just post it as made, because that particular face is very inspiring to me.

Anyway, here’s what started as a double portrait. The remote model was originally actually the paintress and the model in this painting.
I changed it to two different characters.