A white baton, a luscious mane of hair and a vivid blue butterfly: these were the elements that came together to create a perfect - and perfectly unusual - portrait of a conductor.
And the judges of this year's Archibald Prize were as compelled by the subject, Canberra Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Jessica Cottis, as the artist himself.
Canberra artist Oliver Shepherd was on a high on Friday following the news his portrait of Cottis is a finalist in Australia's most famous art prize.
A lawyer by day, the self-taught painter said he was immediately taken by Cottis' stage presence when he first saw her in action two years ago.
"I'd heard about her, but as soon as she walked out on stage, physically, there's some things like the big iconic ponytail that just screamed at me," he said.
A diminutive figure, Cottis has a dramatic and idiosyncratic conducting style on stage and, Shepherd would discover, was equally beguiling off stage.
Through a friend who plays oboe in the orchestra, he organised a meeting with her, and the two hit it off immediately.
"I got the impression that she was kind of intimidating and obviously a genius in her own right, so I was very nervous to meet her," he said.
"But then within five minutes, it was like old friends. We had so much in common."
Shepherd had spent some time studying music before settling on law, and the two discussed playlists and composers.
They also bonded over colour - specifically the colour blue.
A synaesthete who sees colour in music, Cottis said she had felt no apprehension whatsoever at having her portrait painted for the first time.
"We spoke so much about colour, and how colour affects us, how we interact with colour on a daily basis," she said
"I felt immediately at ease. I'd seen some of his other paintings as well, and they're just incredible ... classical yet modern. That was for me actually something that resonated with me personally."
The London-based conductor was in town this week to conduct a suite of works at Llewellyn Hall focused around the colour blue, and the two took the opportunity to meet up for the first time in nearly two years.
They agreed the challenge had been to determine how best to capture her in action.
"She has two personas," Shepherd said.
"There are 60 people on stage and all you can do is watch her. And then she stops and she talks to the audience, and suddenly it's this gentle, lightly English voice being incredibly charming and funny."
He also watched her during a rehearsal backstage, and noticed various "dramatic poses" while she interacted with the musicians.
"But there's also the side of her that just sits in the corner of the room on a rainy afternoon with a score just thinking about what the music means and how she's going to interpret it and communicate that to the orchestra, and the audience. She said, 'That's more my true self', which I totally understood," Shepherd said.
Cottis said the portrait succeeded in depicting both her gravitas and energy as a performer, and her secondary passion, the study of butterflies.
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