Valentine Breakdown

My main inspiration for these pictures was a series of autochrome photos taken by photographer Mervyn O'Gorman around 1913, the girl in the pictures is named Christina, she was his daughter.

I just love the vibe of these photos, the pastel colors of the beach pebbles, the paleness of Christina's hair and skin, it all contrasts so nicely with the deep red of her outfit, and it was this contrast that sparked the initial idea for this series.

Another influence was the works of two artists, William Henry Margetson and Heinrich Kley.

I think the inspiration on Margetson's is pretty easy to notice, especially on picture number 5, I think the vibe of his work and Christina's photos are very similar, so I think connecting both in my head was an easy jump.

Heinrich Kley's influence is a little less evident, but what I took from it was more of an overall "softness" for the character's body, Kley's take on anatomy is very loose and to me it feels less concerned with correctness, and more on creating flowing, graceful lines, that's what I tried to capture from his work, I think that picture 4 was the one the got the closest to succeed.

Something you probably noticed is that this series is a bit chaotic when It comes to style cohesion 😅

 I usually try to maintain a main style when I do series like these, but in this case, I sort of let myself follow what felt fun at the time, however, I did try to keep the color pallet relatively steady between all pictures:

I'm afraid there isn't a lot more for this particular series, the overall idea is pretty simple, however, I want to leave you with one last resource you might find interesting:

 These pictures above come from a collection of 72,000 autochrome photos called "The Archives of the Planet", they were taken between 1908 and 1931, and you can see them all here, you need some patience to look through all the photos, and not all of them are great, but if you like old photos like I do, this is a very fun site to flip through occasionally and find some inspiration ^^

And that's pretty much it, hope this breakdown was an interesting read.
thanks a lot for your support and patience my friends ^^

Cheers!