Here is a piece of art I created in response to the prompt Dark and Light.

Here is the full image:

My drawing club meets every couple of weeks, and this session’s theme was Light and Dark.

As soon as I heard the prompt, I knew I wanted to base my drawing on a high-contrast portrait, starting with a black canvas and building up with white pencil and charcoal strokes. This reverse process is something I have embraced and loved, made possible by creating digital art on my tablet with Infinite Painter.

The basis of the drawing was a piece by someone who goes by mjart, made using AI, particularly Midjourney. I saw it on Pinterest and loved the composition and the beauty of it. I was surprised to find out that it was AI-generated, because the details seemed so real, and it had very non-standard lighting.

After laying out the features using a blue pencil, I filled in the large white areas with big blobs and tried to blend them with pencil and charcoal tools. That made it hard, and it looked like the subject had a Phantom of the Opera mask. But I worked through the valley of despair, and it took shape, especially when I lightened up the areas in the bloom of the light with an airbrush.

I was surprised and delighted to see where it ended up. Where the original image was about the beauty of the woman, my piece became about the contrast between the light and beautiful side and the dark and gritty side. The light still feels like a mask over half of this face. I feel like this is how a lot of people live: with a bright mask and a less perfect but honest side obscured in the dark. The facial expression of the subject took on a sadness under the surface as a sketch.

What do you think? Does it have meaning to you?