A portrait of St. Vincent.

My latest portrait is St Vincent, also known as Annie Clark. She has a stark look to her image, and I really wanted to portray it. After some research the drawing took a change in direction when I found a great image of her on stage playing her guitar, the dramatic lighting giving her hair a 'mad scientist' quality.
The drawing took some time, portraits never get any easier. I had to draw the face at a normal angle because the angles and features can get out of kilter, but afterwards turned it back to the original angle. The most fun was putting the colours on, and how the subtle shades and tones work next to each other. Also, I held back on too much detail because the most interesting qualities of the picture were the stark colours and dramatic lighting. The guitar is mostly a white line because I wanted the focal point to be her blue eye shadow. Her hair was a lot of fun to paint, there were some really unexpected colours in the shadows, and making it 3d drew my eye even further into the picture.

The first stage drawing. The dodgy left hand was sorted out with colour, it was actually 

blurred on the photo, so I had to use my hand as a model and blur it a little.

The finished drawing.