The first one doesn't really have a name, I've just been calling her either the young Noblewoman or the young Court Woman. The second one I did this week is called the Queen. These started off being based on the historical time periods and cultures from which I imagined the pattern to have originate. I didn't do any research other than internal stores of knowledge about these time periods based on what I've seen in period movies or tv or on what I've read. Even though these portraits had a historical base, I wanted the characters I created to be purely my interpretation, with as little outside reference as possible (although, as I mentioned in this week's inspiration post, outside references began to sneak in somewhat subconsciously anyway). Now, however, this Queen character may be an anonymous historical figure from the thirteenth century, or she may be an entirely fictional character from a story about a fantastical other land altogether. The otherworldly extravagance of the Queen character has prompted me to reach even more obviously out of the box with further portraits.
It was important to me to create a character with a visual identity, as if these are women who existed whose stories were never told. With a single pattern as a jumping off-point, I am essentially creating a story in my mind and visually communicating one mysterious little hint of it. This makes a lot of sense to me, because when I originally started college, I was a creative writing major (and now I am a minor). The thing I enjoy most about writing is building a world in my head and then describing it through rich sensory detail (and at this point I'm a bit less interested in visually portraying the world itself and a bit more interested in the people in the story). I'm interested in the vast amount of information you can glean from one visual representation, as from how someone is posed, what he or she appears to be doing, what he or she is wearing, etc, and I'm really enjoying creating these visual cues.
I have plans to move on to a similar type of portrait using actual fabric next week, while still continuing this series of character panels as well as continuing work on the larger painting.
I'm not sure of the significance of my pull towards drawing women (I may have addressed this already). It may be because it seems natural to draw the female figure over the male figure, given that it's so much more prevalent throughout the history of art. It may be because it's just easier for me to identify with a female character, and this creating a character exercise is something I've always done in my head whenever I've drawn an anonymous female portrait. I also think I'm just better at drawing women. So yes, I plan on making them ALL women. This also seems appropriate given that my starting point is textile designs, since it's very domestic and feminine.
The significance of the textiles themselves seems to be diminishing, although I still favour it as a good launch pad because it seems to be working, and because I think the patterns I'm most drawn toward are ones that are traditionally used in textiles (even though I'm working with paper, the papers I'm choosing all look like they could be fabrics moreso than anything else). If I were to change the launch pad as it were, and try to create a character based on another source of input, I don't know what it would be.
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