Jane Birkin Painting

Jane Birkin

So, Jane Birkin this week. 

Aside from being one of the most beautiful women to ever live she's: an actress, director, musician, writer, humanitarian and the inspiration behind the Hermes Birkin Bag. She appeared in Michaelangelo Antonioni's sixties counter-culture paranoid classic Blow-Up and, after her marriage to John Barry (the man who wrote the James Bond theme) ended, she had a passionate relationship with cigarette smoking French songman Serge Gainsbourg. Amongst the fruits of this union were their daughter (and muse of Lars von Trier) Charlotte Gainsbourg and the fantastically atmospheric album Histoire De Melody Nelson. 

If none of that rings a bell, she was also the scandalously breathy female voice on the 1969 sex-record Je t'aime... moi non plus (I love you... neither do I).

Anyways, quite a quick painting this time around. One of the reasons is that I'm experimenting with some new ways of working. The other is that, when you're considerably closer to the end of your twenties than the start, no amount of Burger Kings or Lucozade can stand in the way of a two day hangover.

But in the midst of my two days of staring at a wall with my mouth half-open I got a delivery of 60 brand new Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils: 

So beautiful

They are the most beautiful things I've ever seen and I was desperate to try them out. So I overlayed the original Jane Birkin acrylic painting that I made with a bit of detail in coloured pencil. And I will probably do it again soon.