And here we have it! A new portrait to add to the collection, and I had such a great time making this one . We started out with some photos of the kids, my client didnt want a formal, ‘posey’ portrait, but something that showed each childs personality and an end product that tells a story about who they are. So we went for the idea of taking each child individually, and placing them side by side along the panel. This made things a little easier for choosing photos to work from too, and we quickly settled on these three images, which I then cropped down and zoomed in to frame each face for the closeup.

Then I did the line art and started on the portraits! Here is a photo showing early progress, the background colour blocked in, the line drawing done, and the black shadows filled in:

I really like the simplicity of this stage, with its high contrast black and white, and the suggestions of shape without all the detail. However the next steps are really fun too as I watch the faces taking their forms as the grey tones are added:

You can see that I also keep the working drawings handy as reference while I work. From this point onwards, I worked on each portrait individually, finishing them one at a time so I could focus better on each face without the distraction of moving between them, this meant it was also easier to customise the grey tones as needed to best fit each feature. These are such lovely kids and were a real delight to paint, I was almost sorry when it was all finished!

However, I was really happy with the final result, and so were my clients!  Eventually there will be another update with a photo of this portrait hanging in their new home in California. I hope it brings them a lot of pleasure, and is a happy reminder of their time spent with us here in the Netherlands I will end my post then with some close ups, these I will post here in gallery form, so click on the thumbnails for the gallery, then again on the main gallery image if you want the full size photo: