I am working on the vampire girl tutorial at the moment and something interesting has happened. First, you need to know that to spite my best efforts, I can never exactly copy these pieces. I can get close, but the features always change in subtle ways. On the silk girl, she actually changes race, she’s not Chinese anymore. On the blonde girl in the red dress, well she looks like me. We laugh about that.

The vampire girl is really interesting though. She’s definitely a different girl, but her expression has changed as well. In my version she actually looks a touch wistful, maybe even remorseful. It reflects my own personal musing about what a vampire might feel, though I assure you, it never entered my mind as I painted her. The only thing I felt was frustration at my lack to ability to copy what is right in front of my eyes.

I keep coming back to a quote I vaguely remember about how the expression you find in a portrait always comes from the painter, not the subject of the painting. It was a literal thing for the blonde girl, but very true in a different way for this portrait too.