Alone with Laurent Dauptain in his studio, who paints a huge self-portrait, 195x135cm in size. The film follows every moment of creation, every stroke of charcoal, every hesitation, every dab of paint. The figure appears in the erasure of a line, the blend of colours, the passage from acrylic to oil. It is a 26-minute shot-reverse shot sequence between the artist and his image, in which the painter’s face is revealed. The viewer follows the creation of the painting from the white canvas to the finished work.

Laurent Dauptain lives and works in Cachan in the Paris suburbs. Much of his work is comprised of self-portraits.
This documentary is part of a collection of portraits of painters devised and directed by François Catonné (DOP on more than sixty films: Régis Wargnier, Bertrand Blier, Robert Enrico, Gerard Mordillat...). The idea is to show the painter at work: all the action takes place in the artist’s studio, in which they are the only people to be seen and heard.