Here is yet another edition of Painting Process by Lindsey Huss! This painting is titled, “Death Doesn’t Care About Beauty.” The theme is obviously death like always. The idea came from reading a beauty magazine of all things. I use them to practice drawing the models. As I was looking through one, I noticed a lot of the article titles were stuff like, “How To Get Prettier Eyes in Such and Such Amount of Days” and “Want Shinier Hair? Put This Shit In It!” It made me think, there are actually people in this world who heavily rely on these articles to make their lives “better.” But why? I mean, I wear makeup, but I don’t sit there and worry about if I’m pretty enough for everyone or how I compare to someone else in the looks department. I got more important shit to do.
Then I rememberd all these Hollywood icons who are written about in a negative manner if they don’t go out in public with makeup on. Suddenly their faces are plastered all over the cover of magazines with titles such as “Blonde Bomb Shell Seen Without Makeup! Why She Should Never Do It Again,” and other works of celebrity gossip.
But who cares what someone looks like without makeup or shiny hair or a perfect figure and blah blah. It doesn’t make you immune from disease. It doesn’t stop your family from loving you. And in the end, Death doesn’t care what you look like.
So here’s the process.
Basic line art came first. I think I re-drew this like 600 times. I decided on a woman staring at her own reflection in a mirror, with her makeup and perfume in front of her.
Only, I didn’t want it to be her reflection, I wanted it to be Death staring back at her. Or it could be Fate. However you want to interpret it.
Next came laying some basic flat color.
After I let that dry for awhile. I started on the eye. I am extremely bad when it comes to eyes for some reason. I think I sat there, just holding the paint brush, staring at the canvas for a good twenty minutes. At one point, my mom came into the room and asked what I was doing. I told her I was focusing. She understood and left. (She knows how crazy I can get with my art).
I think the eye actually turned out pretty good.
After a few hours and break to play Final Fantasy, I added some copper paint to her hair to kind of give it a little more detail. (Also because Michael’s near my house started selling Artist’s Loft brand metallic acrylic paint and I bought a bunch and was dying to use it).
I also painted in the background. i don’t like to add a lot to my backgrounds when I paint. I feel like sometimes too much going on in a painting can ruin it.
Next came the skull. I paint and draw them so often that I feel like they almost come second nature to me at this point.
And finally! I added the perfume and a pearl necklace on her makeup stand and signed it! Ta da!! My brother’s first reaction was, “Linds, why do you paint so much creepy stuff? I like it, but it’s creepy.” And that’s one of the many reasons why I paint creepy things. It makes you ask questions. Does a vase of flowers make you ask questions? If it does, let me know what that question is cause I’d love to know how your mind works.
That being said, thank you for reading!
You can view all of my work here: https://www.facebook.com/LindsHuss