The Panda With a Pearl Earring

*NOTICE: MY COMPUTER HAS JUST BROKEN AGAIN. THIS POST WAS WRITTEN IN ADVANCE - IT IS POSSIBLE I WONT BE ABLE TO KEEP YOU GUYS UPDATED NEXT WEEK!*

Hiya there Jammers, Arctic here!

If you've been keeping up with the last couple of posts I've done, you'll know that I'm planning a fun summer art project for myself! The plan is to make a parody masterpiece of a famous painting with an AJ twist and add a little bit each week (and post about it) and show you my process up to the end result!

Now, last week I said I was going to decide which famous painting I wanted to parody and start working on my masterpiece. And that's just what I did!

I spent the next day or so thinking about what painting I wanted to do, and I finally settled for this one:

You might recognize this painting - it's by a dutch painter named Vermeer and it's called "Girl With a Pearl Earring". It has often been called the Mona Lisa of the North because of the girl's mysterious and captivating gaze (much like the Mona Lisa!). I thought this painting would be a good place to start because it is pretty simple in that the main focus is on the figure (no significant background!) and that it would be easily recognizable, even if I parodied it!

For the AJ twist, I decided to paint the masterpiece with Liza as the girl - hence my title "The Panda with a Pearl Earring".

To begin, I started out with a rough sketch of what I generally wanted the drawing to look like.

Luckily, the painting I'm basing it off of isn't too difficult in terms of positioning (I don't have to draw the rest of the body, thank goodness!) This part was done in about half an hour-ish? Maybe less. I didn't keep such a close eye on the clock!

I was feeling quite good about this piece, so I decided to carry on and do a little bit more with it the next day. My next step was to determine the basic colours I needed to use. I wanted to keep it as close to the original as I could while also making it quite obviously Liza. To do this, I kept the original colours of the headpiece, but changed the colour of the dress to match Liza's.

At this point, the masterpiece doesn't have to be too detailed. I only need the very basic colours right now- I'll start doing some more detailed work next week!

That's all for the project so far, folks. Stay tuned for next week to see what I add!

See you around!