Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres Reproduction 

Oil on Canvas 30”x48” 2024

Image 1-5: Process photos. I always loved the composition of “Grande Odalisque” by Ingres. At the beginning of 2024, I hadn’t done a portrait in nearly three years. I craved a challenge but didn’t want to reproduce the painting exactly. So, I used my girlfriend at the time to replicate the composition of the famous painting using my bed and my own objects that I had at hand. Breaking the piece down by sections allowed whatever technical abilities that I had at the time to be implemented in a relatively effective manner. It was primarily the face that I had trouble with mostly because a face is a complicated structure to accurately depict and I was simply technically unprepared to achieve what I had gotten away with throughout the rest of the painting.

Image 6-7: The first completed face. She looked like a fish. No matter how many times I attempted to save the face, the aquatic nature of this animal wouldn’t let go. Eventually, I decided to redo the face completely, tackling it in a similar way to how I paint a face now — painting the whole section in one session using a gestural technique that lays the features out with less detail but more accurately capturing the spacing of the features and approximate colors.

Image 8: Final portrait. Completed in early 2025 — I have learned a lot from the more recent portraits that I’ve completed and would redo many aspects of this painting but choose not to. This is the struggle of the painter - each painting you complete is an educational experience and makes you look at your previous work with fresh eyes. It’s a trap; the best thing you’ll make is the next thing.

Cost: $3000 (I was not making money selling artwork at the time this was created - it was more of an experiment/ practice piece. The cost attributed to this painting is to show what a painting of this detail, size, and subject matter would cost).