Mirror Mirrors was yet another result of an assignment in my Survey of Illustration class where we went over the history of illustration and its many sub-categories. For a few of these categories, we were given the task of creating illustrations that embodied the core elements of the respective genre.
Mirror Mirrors came out of our "Realism" project. And I kind of mixed in surrealism because it made the subject a little bit more interesting to me.
Realism isn’t really my forte. I enjoy it, sure. But, I am so much more drawn to stylized work and the use of line than I am in replicating something I see realistically.
Mind you, my thumbnails show a complete lack of realism and a complete obsession with surrealism. So, I decided to take characteristics of both – the “real” of realism and the “surreal” of surrealism.
Here you can see a bit how I went about painting. You can see my reference (a stock image) that I have placed in the file. To better understand how the dress back would fall on the figure, I went ahead and painted the rough shape on the ref image itself. I painted the image in black and white and then colored that image using a multiply technique to keep the tonal details.
Do note that while the ref image is there, I did not trace the image. I put it within the document so that it could be close by and I wouldn’t have to jump between windows to look at it.
After getting feedback on the piece from my class, I decided to take some advice my teacher gave me and make the woman's reflection looking up and at the viewer since she herself seems to be looking down. That was a more obvious way to push the surrealism that I had hoped to include.
And a close-up of the changes in the face:
