Portrait in Oil

I finished this one just after the first of the year. It is my first oil portrait from a photograph (actually from 2 photographs...and I looked at many others of them). It is 18 x 24 inches. Oil on gallery wrapped canvas. I have never met them. She loves it. I am varnishing it this week and sending it to her.

Learning Points.
whew, so many...
1. composition of 3 children
2. skin coloring and dimension with colors
3. I greyed down their hair color and painted softly like a halo to give them a sunlit glow against the dark background
...my biggest challenge was pouring through photographs from the clients facebook page and trying to determine what their actual skin coloring was in real life; all of the pictures were home pictures, so no professional ones...and the 2nd biggest one was they were not all together like this in one photograph, so I had to do sketches to find what worked best.

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Albums: Portraits and Commissions

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Comment by Laura Xu on January 15, 2014 at 13:49: Such a great work!

Comment by Pandalana Williams on January 15, 2014 at 10:25: Thank you everyone! I am pretty happy with it being my first one, but I know I have a looooooong way to go.

Comment by Silvana M Albano on January 15, 2014 at 9:39: Wonderful portraits Pandalana!

Comment by Jim Haycock on January 15, 2014 at 5:32: Wow! I knew from your other work that you could do some great portraits. These are amazing!

Comment by Pauline Le Merle on January 15, 2014 at 4:34: exquisite!

Comment by Christine Lewis on January 15, 2014 at 4:06: Great work...it's beautiful!

Comment by Jessica Futerman on January 14, 2014 at 22:15: This is amazing, Pandalana, especially when from what you were working with! Their faces are very expressive & the little girl looks especially happy - beautiful!