Colour Filter Study (2024)

This study was an exercise in translating painterly emotion through absence — reducing a full-colour portrait to tone and value while preserving its depth and intimacy. The process of filtration and digital reworking allowed me to explore how contrast alone can hold narrative weight.

By stripping the image of hue, the study exposes the underlying structure of the composition — the scaffolding of emotion beneath the surface. The softened edges and fractured textures speak to distortion and memory, transforming what was once a study in warmth and brushstroke into something spectral.

What interested me most here was the paradox of clarity and distance: how the removal of colour can reveal truth, even as it obscures detail. The result sits somewhere between photograph and lithograph, painterly yet austere, emotion distilled to its tonal core.

Created through a layered digital process, this piece reinterprets a prior painting (Head & Brushstroke Study, 2024) using a monochromatic filter and texture overlay. The resulting grain simulates graphite and charcoal crosshatching, enhancing the tactile quality of shadow. Adjustments in luminance and midtone balance were applied to preserve form without soft gradients. The study functions both as a compositional analysis and as an aesthetic meditation on perception.