Painting Plan

In the studio, I plan to develop a new work that brings together multiple portrait drawings into a single layered image. What started as a spontaneous experiment - overlaying two finished drawings and photographing the result - has opened up new possibilities for composition and form.

The overlaid photo of two drawings created an unplanned but striking image. Facial features blurred together, expressions shifted, and new visual relationships emerged between the two subjects. It felt less like a combination and more like a convergence - where one identity folded into another. This has led me to plan a painting that recreates that layered image as a single unified composition.

Rather than treating each portrait as an isolated image, I plan to work with them as structural components within a larger, more complex whole.

CMY Layering and Compositional Transparency

To bring this painting to life, I'm using the CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) colour model to separate and organise the layers:

• The first layer will be painted in cyan

• The second in magenta

• A possible third layer in yellow

While this approach references the Samoiloff effect (https://www.laurensimons.art/post/the-samoiloff-effect) I'm not aiming to activate it in the optical sense (at the moment). The Samoiloff effect is based on a phenomenon between the CMY and RGB colour systems, where the overlaid images (in cyan, magenta, and yellow) can be selectively revealed through red, green, or blue filtration/lighting. It's a powerful system of encoded visibility - but in this work, I will be engaging with it primarily as a compositional tool.

What interests me is the transparent layering it involves; the way way separate images can coexist within one visual field without fully collapsing into each other. This quality mirrors ideas in my previous portrait works: fragmented and masked identity.

The layering process is also a response to insights raised in critique sessions:

• The first critique touched on how the drawings felt collective, even puzzle-like. They were less about individual identity and more about presence through composition. This observation is something I will carry forward into the way this new painting is built - as a whole made from interlocking parts. https://www.laurensimons.art/post/critique-1

• The second critique raised questions around the things left unseen - the white space, the emotional neutrality, and the idea of these works as explorations or fragments. The layering of partially visible images offers a way to extend that thinking, allowing some parts to be fully present and others to remain ambiguous or obscured. https://www.laurensimons.art/post/critique-2

Materials and Method

For this painting, I plan to work on a white background to preserve the lightness and clarity of each transparent layer. I will be using my custom acrylic paint mixes which were previously made to balance the saturation of colour with the transparency needed for the laying of the Samoiloff effect, as the goal is to keep the layers distinct, yet soft enough to interact visually without muddying.

The source image (the overlaid photo) serves as a loose compositional map, but I will allow for the painting to evolve through process. As the painting develops, new forms, alignments, and relationships will likely emerge.