Can You Know Someone From A Photo?
August 26, 2025
I never knew my maternal grandmother, she died years before I was born. All I know about her are the few stories I got from my mum and my aunt. Which might be why I'm fascinated by pictures of her, trying to piece together who she was.
La Roulotte, 2025Some of you might remember that in 2022 I drew my grandmother as a young woman, playing the mandolin. I thought it’d be nice to turn it into a series.
Series are great because they make it easier to know what to do next. It removes part of the decision-making process and potential creative block. You can build on what was done before instead of thinking about everything from scratch.
In this instance, I knew I wanted to use graphite pencils and paint the background a bright colour like on the first portrait. But instead of a solid colour this time, I wanted details in the background. So I chose a grey— somewhat replicating the colour of graphite—to mix with the pop colour.
I went with acrylic gouache, seeing as I’m now more familiar with gouache. Applying the first layer of mint green went well. It’s when I tried to do gradient and to blend the colours on paper that I realised something wasn’t quite right. The paint was drying in two seconds and it couldn’t be re-activated with water. It kept telling me “dude, I’m clearly acting like acrylic paint”, to which I would reply “no, you’re gouache and you’re going to behave like it!” Guess who won?
Once I started treating it like acrylic, I was able to (mostly) do what I wanted with the paint.
Reference photo
In the image my grandmother is sat in front of the food trailer my grandparents used to operate on weekends, to make ends meet. A fact I only learnt about when I showed my mum the reference photo. There are still so many things I don’t know about my grandmother. I’ll keep looking for clues in photos of her.
Judith xx
Close-ups
Monthly inspiration
The Korean-born, London-based artist Do Ho Suh’s work explores the idea of what ‘home’ is. His large-scale installations are breath-taking by the mastery and time that went into them.
One of his pieces inspired the colour of the fourth and final drawing I will be doing in my series. This is all made from fabric:
You’ll see next month which colour I used for the third drawing
The below was made by covering an actual house in paper, rubbing graphite on it, then removing the paper and reconstructing the house with it!
The same wallpaper ran throughout the exhibition. From far it looked like tiny dots, but up-close you realised they were actually portraits of people:
I really liked his illustrations:
This plinth was transported into the museum by the ‘people’ underneath it:
I’ll leave you on these lovely details, made of fabric and thread:
Want to get this blog directly in your inbox each month? Just subscribe to my Inspired Substack.
