Creating Neo Deco - 13-07-25

Website link: https://corneakkers.com/neo-deco-13-07-25/
Print: https://corneakkers.com/neo-deco-13-07-25/
Printable: https://corneakkers.com/product/printable-neo-deco-13-07-25/

Buxom Qualities

This graphite pencil drawing ‘Neo Deco - 13-07-35’ shows Ukrainian model ‘Assia Granatouroff’ once more. Still not finished with her. Truely, I discovered she has many more aspects to offer. Take the pose for this one for example. Simply irresistible! Surely, other models could strike the same pose but she bears all the right proportions. At least to me she does. I don’t like too slender or too corpulent models. A bit muscular yes but also a bit buxom yet extremely sensual. Somehow she reminds me of the features Anita Ekberg showed.

Searching for Value to Add

The reference picture was also made by Ergy Landau. A beautiful picture of the 1930s but a bit too perfect from a light and dark point of view. Simply copying those tones would leave me without any interpretation, let alone any value added. Instead, I was looking at my new screen saver on my iPhone. That’s the one I made of Veronica Lake in June 2023 which I found very successful. All the key elements I was searching for I managed to incorporate. Strangely, it weren’t that much nifty things but more a matter of omission.

Whipped Cream

Lately I came to realize something important. I want to create my nudes and also other themes as a kind of ‘whipped cream’. Fluffy, full of open pockets of air. As if the viewer can travel through the structures without visual boundaries. You can say a sort of ‘openness’ that I think the viewer can subconsciously appreciate highly. When I look at true great art from the past a key feature always catches my eye: fluffiness! Whether it’s a Vermeer, Rembrandt, Monet, Cézanne or many others, they created open structures. Contour delineations hardly are strickt so they let their artworks breathe. They can be enjoyed like whipped cream on strawberries. Such were my intentions as to this one.

Graphite pencil (Faber Castell, Pitt Graphite Matt, 14B) drawing on Fabriano Ingres paper (21 x 28.2 x 0.1 cm)
Artist: Corné Akkers