Saturday 14 June 2008

Portrait of the Mona Lisa in pencil


The Mona Lisa is by far my favourite portrait painting.
There is a great sense of truth and oneness in the painting.
Notice how the horizon is lower on the left, it is as though Leonardo was trying to paint more than just reality as we see it.
Leonardo used a technique called the Leading Eye Technique. The head is slightly off centre and one eye is in the centre of the canvas.
This is a technique I try and use in my own portraits.
Her hands are rather large and manlike I believe this is because Leonardo used a mirror and copied his own hands. But I have never read that he did this and she might have just been born with big fat hands.
In this drawing I have tried to achieve an exact copy. But this is always impossible, she is scratching her wrist with her finger, the drawing is 10" by 15"


Drawing of a girl in pencil
by Nick Harvey.


2 comments:

Unknown said...

I never notice that Mona Lisa looks as if she was scatching herself with her finger...I myself had never much care for Mona Lisa, there was always something about this painting that made me think that perhaps this portrat wasn't really a female afterall.

Devika Jyothi said...

This is innovative Nick! :)

the comparatives -- i found it interesting, really...

Mona Lisa is my favourite portrait too..for her serene face..but they say that Da Vinci himself was his model..read something like that years back...

wishes!
devika