Friday, June 6, 2014

A Recent Portrait Commission


 This is a commission I just finished for a great friend and collector of my work. When you are starting out, if you are lucky, your friends buy your work. As you get older, the people who buy your work become friends. Not everyone who buys a painting becomes a friend. Everyone is different. Some people buy a painting or two and you never hear from them again, others I talk to all of the time, usually through Facebook. It's one of the best aspects of this business is all of the great people I get to meet!
This is number five of six grandchildren I have been commissioned to paint.


 This is a 16 x 20 portrait study. My favorite portraits to paint are two and three day studies. This painting was finished in three days. Actually it was supposed to be a two day portrait, but like I said, she's a good friend...


The drawing was done with a brush, and completed in about an hour and a half, maybe two hours.
Because she was three years old, I had to do this one from a photo, but I still did the drawing freehand with the photo next to me and pretended she was sitting there. She couldn't hold still long enough to take her picture, so painting from life was out the window! I took over four hundred photos, and used a combination of three on this painting. In the shot this pose was in, she wasn't smiling, so I had to add the slight smile from another photo.


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