The Story Behind the Portrait "When I Was Pretty" - Part II

The same evening she approached me about her portrait,  we went to her house and searched  through old photo albums looking for a  picture of her when she was around 19. Most of the photos were at the wrong age or were too distant to get a clear image of her face. Finally I came across this strip of two pictures she took of herself in a photo booth. They were small, only about 1inch by 1inch, but they were clear,and of the right age. As the ideas for the portrait  were  working out in my mind, the one looking forward closely matched my memory of that moment and seemed right for the portrait.
We talked about what media I would use. She wanted color but was unsure of paint or pastel. I told her about my most recent work in pastel in a 19 inch by 25 inch format. She sounded excited in the possibilities of pastels and I left that evening with the two picture photo booth  snapshot and a new commission.


The next day I started working on the drawing. The first thing I did was take photos of the snapshots so that I could enlarge them on my computer. I would then work from the computer image rather than directly from the photo.

Then I took out some drawing paper to work out ideas for the design of the drawing. I wanted to depict the setting of my cousin standing in the loft, but in my first sketches, the image of her was too small to show her clearly, and I wanted to emphasize the beauty of the woman as well as the setting.
My solution to the problem was to show her twice, once in the setting of the loft at the lake house, and an overlapping close up of  her from the same image.

Once I decided on the design, I began to gather the different elements of the drawing together. I wanted the drawing to have a feeling of warmth  so I chose to use red colored paper. Then I photographed the lake house from the view entering the front door. The cottage has changed a lot sense then, two additions have been built, the kitchen has been rearranged, and the loft is now enclosed, but  the photo still helped get
the light and perspective right.
I then photographed a model posing beside a window lifting her shirt in the same pose and the same lighting as I envisioned the drawing. Putting it all together on my computer, snapshot, photo of the cottage, pictures of the model, I worked from the computer to combine all the elements with red paper and pastels.

I presented the drawing to my cousin a week later matted and framed. Tears came to her eyes as she gave me a hug," It's beautiful David. I love the colors. I really was pretty wasn't I."

The Story Behind the Portrait "When I Was Pretty" - Part I

Sometimes the story that inspired the drawing is as important as the drawing itself.The story of this drawing began at the family lake house in the summer of 1963. I was 15 when my cousin came to visit. I knew her as  my older cousin, four years my senior, who thrilled over the music of Elvis, Pat Boon, and Sal Minieo. Who shrieked with false mortification when her younger cousins would sneak into her room  in one end of my grandmother's attic, to see her shrine of clippings from fan magazines of her favorite rock and roll stars. Then before I hardly knew her she was gone, married at 16.

When she came to visit at the lake house she was 19. She had been living in Philadelphia with her husband and came ahead alone to Michigan with her husband to follow later. It was about 9 a.m. when I stepped inside the cottage. I noticed movement in the upstairs loft and looked up to see my cousin, with a smile, raise her top and  reveal her breasts to me.

At 15, I was still very innocent. I was surprised and laughed, and never said anything about it, but I always remembered that moment.

After she and her husband went back home, she and I had little contact. I graduated from high school, graduated from college, got married, got drafted at 21, and was in Vietnam in 1971 when she sent me a letter.
By this time she had four children and had recently left her husband after she discovered he was leading a double life as a homosexual. In her letter, she said, "All these years I was unhappy, but I didn't know why. No one ever told me I was pretty."

I wrote her back and reminded her of the time in the lake house. To me, I said, at that moment, you were the most beautiful woman in the world. Years later, she told me she cried when she read my letter.

Now I am an artist of 62 and she is 13 times a grandmother at 67. We met recently and she was telling me that her children cannot remember and her grandchildren cannot imagine her as anyone but old and 100 pounds overweight. She asked, "Could you do a drawing of me, recapturing that moment at the lake house, when I was pretty?"

 In Part II of "When I Was Pretty", I will the discuss the process involved in creating the final drawing.