I am now back with my watercolors and pastels and catching up with some things I had started a few weeks ago. We will have company next week. My son and his family are coming for a visit. I thought it would be fun to paint some portraits of his children, so I started looking through my picture file.
Maizie is now a 20 year old college student. I found an adorable photo from a summer visit many years ago.
I began with a watercolor underpainting.
Next step was to begin to add pastel. I was mainly working on lights and darks and some local color to see what worked.
I wasn't sure about a background color. She has always loved purple so I wanted to keep the hat and shirt purple. I do like green with purple and I knew I wanted to keep it simple and not paint the whole scene.
Whoa! That's really green!
I toned it down a little with some light blue and then tried to work on the shadows. The original photo had dramatic shadows. Note the dark under her chin and hat. However, I keep remembering two of my instructors warning against dark shadows with small children. So, I lightened up some of the darks.
I did a little more defining and 'tweaking' and signed it...thinking I was done...
It's so hard to stop. I looked at it a few days later and made a few more revisions in background color, smoothing out skin texture, a little more work on her hat...
I just need to put it in a frame under glass and call it finished!
