My character is tucked behind the figure with the skirt, right next to the model. Finding information on this possible child was impossible, so I came up with a few theories. Firstly, he could be a depiction of Courbet himself, as the painting is of people who helped him. My other theory is that he was a poet or writer as some of the other people in the painting.
I felt a particular interest in this figure because half of his body is not visible, which created some mystery for me especially because you might not even notice him at all if you weren’t paying attention. This made him stand out because the viewer questions who this could even be as we can’t even tell his status by clothing.
For my rendition I tried to base my outfit on what can be seen, a collared shirt with a jacket/sweater over top. I decided to do a close up shot because I didn’t want to create something that wasn’t there. I also used paper and pencil as props, and created some “non words” because the writing on the paper was unreadable in Courbet’s work. I was hoping to be able to take the photo from a higher angle so it would be a closer rendition since I was going for replication, however, I am still content with how the image resulted. The first image was simply me playing around with portrait mode on my phone, I wanted to see what effects I could create. The second image was my final, and I am quite happy with the result. There is still contrast in the different values but it was still relatively flat and dark, which is how he was depicted in the painting.
a journey that wasn't 