Refined pointillism

Idea

For quite some time, I have been following Gamazda on YouTube. She is an exceptionally talented pianist who can conjure every kind of music from a piano. From classical music to The Beatles, from Linkin Park to Motörhead, from Simon & Garfunkel to Metallica—and of course one of my personal favorites, Pink Floyd. An immense talent, and wonderful music to listen to.

Her real name is Aleksandra Kuznetsova, and last November she gave a one-off concert at the Westerkerk in Amsterdam. It was a phenomenal concert, and experiencing her talent live is even more impressive than online. In addition to her virtuoso playing, she radiates tremendous energy while performing, and above all, genuine joy in what she does.

It inspired me to create her portrait—also, of course, because creating portraits is simply incredibly enjoyable.

Approach

For this piece, I started with an aluminium composite panel measuring 65 × 50 cm. I sanded the surface and applied four layers of Liquitex white gesso, followed by another round of sanding. Next time I will thin the gesso slightly more, because even after sanding there were still some visible brush marks in the ground layer—always something to learn.

After preparing the surface, I went in search of a strong reference photo. I wanted to capture her intense focus combined with the obvious joy she radiates while playing the piano. From there, I moved on to choosing the colors. This time, my goal was to refine my technique further by working with much smaller dots than in my previous pointillism pieces. I kept to a limited palette of five base colors, adding a few extra tones only in the transitional areas to create more subtle nuances.

For the base palette, I selected five colors from the Molotow One4All range, using purple violet as the darkest tone instead of black. Additional colors were introduced later to soften transitions and enrich the color depth.

As usual, I began by blocking in the portrait using refill ink, painting it as a composition of flat color areas. During this stage, I noticed that the purple-violet ink did not cover the white surface as evenly as most of the other colors. It took three passes before it finally matched the intensity of the marker.

Choosing to work with smaller dots inevitably had a major impact on the time involved. I rarely keep track of hours, but even with relatively large unstippled areas in the final piece, I estimate it took at least twice as long as my earlier pointillism works. Fortunately, the end result made every extra hour worthwhile.

For the finishing stage, I experimented this time with several layers of clear coats. I started with a matte coating, which helped to even out the ink and camouflage any areas where it had bled through. Once that layer had dried, I applied a gloss coating to deepen the colors and enhance their intensity. Finally, I finished with another matte clear coat, resulting in a beautifully even and balanced surface.

After carefully polishing the frame, the piece was finally complete. A project that demanded time and precision, but rewarded me with a result that truly reflects both the subject and the joy of creating it.