Creating Lust

Finding the Face of Desire

Lust presented me with a problem almost immediately.

What does Lust actually look like?

I struggled with the face.

I knew what I didn't want. I didn't want the obvious seductive expression, the pout, conventional beauty or any of the familiar clichés we have come to associate with desire.

That felt too easy.

I wanted something less polished and more instinctive. Something uncomfortable. Something that captured the raw, primal energy of Lust rather than simply showing somebody who looked desirable.

Finding that face took time.

I experimented with different expressions, and in the second image of this gallery you'll see one of those earlier possibilities superimposed in the corner of my preparatory sketch. I deliberately placed it there so you can compare the face I was considering with the one I eventually chose.

The earlier version wasn't necessarily wrong.

It just wasn't my Lust.

It still felt too familiar, too close to an image of seduction we already recognise.

So I pushed it further.

The face that eventually emerged was more primal. Desire was no longer posing for the viewer. I wanted it to feel urgent, physical and almost beyond the point of caring how it appeared.

That changed everything.

A face can determine the emotional direction of an entire painting, and I knew that if I didn't believe in Lust's expression, nothing I subsequently built around it would convince me either.

I wasn't trying to paint someone looking sexy.

I was trying to paint Lust itself.

Building Around the Impulse

Once I had found the face, I could begin constructing the world around it.

And there is an interesting contradiction in the way Lust was created.

Lust suggests impulse.

Painting it required control.

The early stages are broad. Colour begins establishing the atmosphere, forms strengthen and the different areas of the composition gradually find their place.

Then, as always happens with these paintings, I move closer.

The brushes become smaller.

The details multiply.

What initially appears to be one image begins breaking into many smaller incidents, each requiring its own decisions and hours of work.

The painting becomes richer and increasingly complicated until the loose beginnings are almost completely buried beneath the finished surface.

These photographs preserve that journey.

They aren't here to explain every figure, object or symbol you will eventually see. That would take us into an entirely different story.

The Artist Journal explains what Lust means.

The Creation Gallery shows you how I found Lust and then built the painting around it.

Watch Lust Take Shape

Begin with the early sketches and look particularly at those two different faces.

One shows a direction I could have taken.

The other became Lust.

From there, follow the colour, layers and increasingly intricate detail as the painting moves towards its finished form.

Because before I could explore everything Lust might provoke, conceal or destroy, I first had to answer the question that had been troubling me from the beginning:

What does Lust look like when you strip away the cliché?

1. The First Thought — Searching for Lust

This is where the problem first begins.
Before colour, before detail and before the finished expression, I am trying to work out how Lust should physically occupy the painting.
The sketch allows me to experiment without commitment. I can move things, exaggerate forms and begin establishing relationships without worrying about whether any of it is beautiful.
At this point, the composition is beginning to exist.
But one thing still isn't convincing me.
I haven't found Lust's face yet.
And until I do, I don't really have Lust.

2. Two Faces — Which One Is Lust?

This image records one of the most important decisions in the development of the painting.
I have deliberately superimposed an earlier version of Lust's face into the corner of the draft so that you can see something that would otherwise have disappeared from the story completely.
That was another possibility.
There was nothing technically wrong with it, but it felt too familiar to me. It was closer to the conventional visual language of seduction, and that wasn't what I was trying to capture.
I wanted to get beneath attractiveness.
Beneath posing.
Beneath the cliché.
The expression I eventually chose was much more primal—less about looking desirable and more about the physical force of desire itself.
Putting both versions together allows you to see the decision I had to make.
One looked like Lust.
The other felt like it.

3. Leaving the Drawing Behind

Once the composition moves onto the painting surface, the sketch stops being an idea I can hold in my hand.
Everything becomes larger and more demanding.
This is where I begin judging the relationships between the main forms at full scale. What worked within the confines of the drawing now has to command a much larger surface.
The lines give me structure, but they aren't sacred.
There is still plenty of room for the painting to change as colour begins interacting with what I've drawn.
For now, though, I have something important that I didn't have at the beginning.
I know who Lust is.

4. The First Colour — Giving Lust an Atmosphere

The first oil layer is deliberately broad.
I'm not interested in perfect edges or tiny details yet. I am establishing the colour relationships that will eventually support everything else.
This stage always looks strangely simple when compared with the finished work.
Large areas can be covered quickly. Forms remain loose and much of what will eventually occupy the surface exists only as a suggestion.
But these early decisions matter enormously.
This is where a drawing begins developing atmosphere.
Lust has stopped being lines and started becoming a painting.

5. Eden Learns to Step Back

At this stage, I realised Eden was demanding far too much attention.
It sat higher at the sides of the composition and, rather than quietly existing within Lust's world, it was beginning to dominate it.
That wasn't what I wanted.
Eden is important throughout these paintings, but it doesn't always need to shout.
So I lowered it.
As it moved down the painting, its presence became more demure. It was still there, still accessible and still part of the visual language running through the Seven Deadly Sins, but it no longer competed with Lust for attention.
This was another decision that developed while I painted.
Sometimes an element can be conceptually right but visually wrong. Eden belonged in the painting; it simply hadn't yet found the right way to exist within it.
Lowering it changed the balance.
It became quieter.
Less commanding.
More like a possibility waiting to be noticed than something insisting that the viewer look at it.
And that felt much closer to what I wanted.
Eden didn't disappear.
It simply stopped demanding to be chosen.

6. Depth Begins to Appear

With further layers, the initial flatness begins disappearing.
Dark and light areas gain greater separation, colour becomes richer and the forms start occupying space rather than simply sitting upon the surface.
This is a gradual process.
One layer rarely transforms everything dramatically. Instead, each application slightly changes what came before it.
That accumulation is what gives oil painting its depth.
The early sketch is still buried somewhere beneath all of this.
But increasingly, I stop seeing the drawing.
I start seeing the world it created.

7. Turning Up the Heat

This is where the atmosphere begins becoming considerably stronger.
The warmer areas start asserting themselves and the fire begins to feel less like an area of colour and more like an active presence within the painting. The indexed version of this stage actually records this as the point where “the fire is coming alive.”
Fire is particularly interesting to paint because it isn't a solid object.
It has to appear to move.
So I'm working with transitions of colour, light and darkness rather than simply outlining a shape.
And as those areas intensify, they begin affecting everything around them.
The temperature of Lust is changing.

8. The Foundation Is Almost Gone

By this point, the broad underpainting has largely completed its job.
The main colour relationships are established. The forms have weight and the atmosphere has become much closer to what I want from the finished painting.
This is the threshold I reach in all these highly detailed works.
I have spent a great deal of time creating something that I am now about to cover with something else.
The broad brushwork will gradually disappear.
The brushes get smaller.
The pace slows.
Now I can begin getting dangerously close.

9. Lust Moves Into the Detail

This is where the painting begins changing character.
Large areas break into smaller ones. Surfaces acquire texture. Figures become more individual and previously simple shapes begin containing their own incidents.
From here, progress becomes increasingly deceptive.
I can spend hours working and appear to have changed very little.
But move closer and the difference becomes obvious.
This is the stage where the painting starts demanding something from the viewer too.
You have to come closer if you want everything.

10. More Than the First Glance

Now the density begins building.
The larger composition still has to work from a distance, but close up, it is becoming something else entirely.
Small elements begin occupying spaces that previously existed only as colour. Relationships become more complicated and the painting starts acquiring those layers of visual information that I enjoy hiding throughout my work.
This is also where restraint becomes important.
Ironically, while painting Lust, I have to know when not to indulge myself.
Detail for the sake of detail adds nothing.
Every addition still has to earn its place.

11. Bringing Everything to the Same Intensity

Near the end, I stop thinking in terms of completing individual sections.
I move around the whole painting.
Something strong on one side may need balancing elsewhere. A colour might need repeating. An edge may need softening. Something I've looked at for months may suddenly annoy me enough to change it.
The face I struggled so hard to find at the beginning now has to belong completely within everything that has grown around it.
Nothing should feel added.
Nothing should feel separate.
The raw impulse and the intricate world it inhabits finally have to become one painting.

12. The Face I Was Looking For

Eventually, I return to where this Creation Gallery began.
The face.
Except now it isn't surrounded by pencil marks and possibilities.
It exists within the completed painting.
Looking back at that alternative expression I considered in the early sketch makes the final decision even more apparent to me. Had I chosen differently, I think the emotional character of the entire painting would have changed with it.
The finished work contains countless hours, layers and details.
But sometimes an enormous painting turns upon one relatively small decision.
For Lust, that decision was an expression.
I didn't want seduction.
I didn't want a cliché.
I wanted something instinctive, consuming and uncomfortably human.
I wanted the raw energy of Lust.
And eventually, I found its face.

When Lust Finally Found Its Face

Looking back through these stages, what strikes me most is how much of Lust depended upon finding the right energy at the very beginning.

I could have chosen the more conventional face.

I didn't.

It wasn't enough to show desire as seductive or attractive. I wanted something more instinctive and primal—an expression capable of carrying the raw force of Lust before any of the surrounding imagery had been understood.

Once I found the face, I found the painting.

But that didn't mean everything else simply fell into place.

As the layers developed, I continued questioning the composition. Eden moved down because it was dominating the sides of the painting. It needed to remain present without competing for attention, becoming quieter and more demure while still offering its possibility.

Other elements strengthened as the colour deepened. The fire gained life. The details multiplied. What began as broad areas of paint gradually became the densely populated world of the finished Lust.

And there is an irony in the amount of restraint required to create it.

Lust is impulsive.

This painting was anything but.

It required patience, control and countless decisions about when to add, when to change and when something needed to step back.

These photographs preserve those decisions.

They show the faces Lust might have worn, the Eden that once occupied too much space and all those earlier versions now buried beneath the final surface.

But they don't tell you why the finished painting contains what it does.

That is another journey.

Why the bell jars?

Why Chastity?

Why the priest?

Why the politician?

Why the fire?

Why the Devil?

And what happens when desire stops caring about consequence?

Those answers belong in the Artist Journal.

Here, you have watched me search for Lust, find its face and build its world around it.

Now discover what that world means.

Jupigio-Artwork-Gallery

Rare - Unusual - Unforgettable

Creating Lust

Finding the Face of Desire

Building Around the Impulse

Watch Lust Take Shape

When Lust Finally Found Its Face

Read Behind Lust →