Nina – 30-11-24

Website link: https://corneakkers.com/nina-30-11-24/
Print: https://corneakkers.com/print-nina-30-11-24/
Printable: https://corneakkers.com/product/printable-nina-30-11-24/

Tedious Website Maintenance

This pastel drawing ‘Nina - 29-11-24’ is my next project after Neo Deco - 04-11-24. This time beautiful model Nina inspired me once more. Follow her on Instagram if you like. A couple of weeks passed since I made my last one. However, I was focused on website maintenance and building my new ‘Prints’ page. Now I’m quite proud of it and perhaps you can take a look at it if you like. However, building a website and maintaining it is stepping into a world of pain. Details I will spare you but sometimes programming feels like firing a gun with buckshot blindfolded on a moving target. For the moment it seems works though. Van Gogh didn’t have to perform these kinds of tedious activities. He simply put some fresh paintings on the train to Theo in Paris and take a sip of the Absinth bottle.

Building up the Pastel

Enough complaining! Slowly but steadily I built up this pastel last month. Laying these hatched strokes takes a lot of time anyway. Besides that, this project was extra complicated. The woman has a very light skin complexion I was willing to study in close detail. Maybe it’s because I remember pointillist paintings by Van Rysselberghe for example. The way he depicted skin textures with a full array of colors like purples, pinks, greens, blues is quite astonishing. I hope I have made something similar. There’s also a more prosaic reason: it also serves as a tonal training. A sort of permament professional education really. With my mind set on my website I didn’t feel poised to execute nifty ideas in this one. There was an idea to do a different background though, such as nature. Then I would have to change cool colors into more green and yellow hues.

The Full Color Wheel

Hence, the real value lies in the complexity of more colors than only complementary greens and reds. The later I used predominantly in ‘Into the Light – 15-06-17’. In this one I also included blues, yellow, orange and brown. The full spectrum of the color wheel so-to-speak.

Pricing

In the meantime I was wondering how to price this item now it’s completed. Now one of Maurizio Cattelan’s banana artworks have been sold for € 5.8 million I propose the following. I’m happy to sell this pastel for € 5.8 million and you get a free duct-taped banana painting for free.

Pastel drawing on Canson Mi-Teintes Touch paper (47 x 62 x 0.1 cm)
Artist: Corné Akkers