Working through some initial ideas - Girl with a Pearl Earing

Following on from some initial ideas I had last week, I  made some sketches and outlines around the concept of using "high art" Old Masters paintings as subjects that could be "chavy-fide"...  what I'm thinking of is using the classic old master's paintings as base ideas, then superimposing contemporary themes to attempt to bring them out of the "high class / high culture" paintings into pseudo low class, poor taste / celebrity culture type objects.

So the first attempt was carried out on Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earing.  A beautiful painting of circa 1665, from the Dutch style.

 A quick sketch of the original helped me to think about how I could adapt this image, to make a more contemporary face, by placing the eyes closer together for instance, narrowing the gaze and sharpening the nose....





The next step was to create a baseline template for an acrylic painting...

and then applying a more contemporary, "stretcher" style earing directly into her ear-lobe, together with an additional stretcher above it.

I've retained the smaller eyes, the narrow gaze, (with a bit more "attitude"), applied a little more eye make up to emphasise lack of sleep, and made the face a bit chubbier and podgy, to reflect the junk food diet that pervades typical contemporary nourishment.