I've been working on this portrait of Christina Ricci for the past month or so. This is derived from this reference image and a few other sources (including some pics of the Hollywood hills and Griffith Observatory - which a good friend of mine captured for me using his digital camera. Thanks Tom!). To get proportions correct on Christina's face, I used the grid method to draw an outline in Photoshop. More detail of the development can be seen here.

I'm not sure exactly why I started this image. I think I was following links randomly after reading reviews of "Black Snake Moan" and ended up on the above reference image. I remember thinking that she looked a lot like the Mona Lisa and began to imagine a variant homage image to Da Vinci's masterpiece. Can't say that I succeeded or failed, but I'm fairly happy with the way the image turned out.

I have to give some recognition and thanks to Steven Stahlberg who helped me bring this out of murky doom with his helpful overpaint and advice to correct lighting and shadows on the image. Thanks again Steven!

Original image is 2656 X 3636 @ 300dpi / Photoshop 7.0
Here is my initial sketch