Jamie in yellow, blue and brown, 2015.

I wanted to do something quick and loose that played with the idea of colour, so I shot Jamie Bochert in my apartment using colour-cream prototypes by Shiseido to frame her eyes. She wasn’t wearing any foundation, and the blue colour-cream prototype in this portrait is the closest likeness of the blue acrylic sample in the image on the opposite page.

Acrylic paint samples, 2008-2014.

In 1997, I began my process of colour creation by painting solid areas of acrylic and watercolour onto sheets of canvas taped onto wooden surfaces. I paint up to twelve panels a day and once I’m done I trim them into squares to use as colour samples. I have hundreds and hundreds of these samples. The ones with a masking tape border are my final selections and will be sent to the Shiseido laboratory in Japan to be transformed into colours and prototypes.