Beautiful morning

A painting of Aftyn Rose lounging around in her underwear, feeling good about herself. I love both this painting and the reference it was drawn from. When I saw the photo, I knew I had to paint it right away, jumping to the top of my priority queue. Her beauty radiates in this. Light beams from her smile.

The biggest challenge here was getting the curves of her bra. It’s like 3 tiers of successive refined curves, where each feeds back on the previous. I didn’t fully nail it, but I think if you aren’t trying to compare to the reference, it looks real enough. The fuzzy textures of her robe don’t stand up to real scrutiny, but they’re also not the focal point. They literally guide your eye to the focus — her subtle smile. That’s something I love about Aftyn as a model; you can always read her mood in her eyes.

Here was an early sketch that I thought had a lot of the character of the piece. Occasionally I’ll feel like the painting has lost something relative to these rough sketches, but not this time. I’m proud of both.