Children's Portrait - Chelsea and Thomas

When I start a painting I try to  visualize first how I would like the finished painting  to look like. The reference photograph I used for Chelsea's and Thomas' portrait is actually cropped somewhere in the bottom section. It  doesn't show Chelsea's  elbows.  I decided to show her elbow as I thought doing so would create a more balanced composition.  By completing Chelsea's arm, I thought I can play around more with  how their clothings  merge with the  background colour. I then started working  on their faces, noting the details in the process.   Then after the faces, I rendered their clothings. I changed the colour of Chelsea's clothes to creamy yellow. Once I was happy with the progress, I roughly added in the background.  At first I planned to just render a very plain sky blue background. Yes, it looks clean and subdued but is kind of boring. The image size is a  bit on the larger size  ( 39cm x 49cm) so really, a plain background would look uninteresting and flat.  The next thing I did was to experiment on the background. I decided to make it more lively. No idea at first how to do it, but eventually settled with lots of rough vertical strokes of various colours which gave it a more painterly and dynamic appearance. Happy with that! My client thought that Thomas' eyes were a bit different from the reference photograph so I did a bit of tweaking to fix it. Then to finish it off, I enhanced the details of Thomas' face and  Chelsea's arms. After that it was time to put aside my pastels. All done!

 

The Versatile IKEA RIBBA Series Frames

        My best friend at the moment is an inanimate object!   Those versatile and very  affordable RIBBA Series frames from IKEA! You see, I  recently  started doing commissioned portraits  and  I am looking  for other ways to frame the artworks.  Usually, pastel paintings are custom framed, sure it looks professional,  but this can be a tad expensive.  Although undeniably, custom framing is still the best way to frame a pastel painting as it can come in multiple mats  and with guttering (to take care of those  loose pastel dusts), a cheaper option must surely exist.

Angel Aquino. Filipina Actress and model. Photo Source from Internet

        So today,  I visited  our local IKEA  supershop  and was gladly overwhelmed with a number of RIBBA frames choices,  both practical and decent looking and of varying colours and sizes.  And to top it all,  these  picture frames are very affordable.  Prices range from AU$ 7.95  for  18cm x 24 cm smallest frame  to the largest frame of  70cm x 100cm at AU$ 39.95. They can even be bought online and seen    here

 

        I have used RIBBA  frames before for some of my paintings and  liked it.  It does the job and is easy to assemble or disassemble.  The only thing I didn’t like about it are those tiny metal fixing pins at the back used to fixed the backing in the frame. They start breaking  off easily after a  number  of disassembly  when attempting to reuse it for another painting or picture. However, with a little resourcefulness  it can easily be fixed so still quite reusable.

        

        So far,  I am happy to be using these frames!




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Update: as of 6/05/2014 found out that the  Ribba frames of  size 50cm x 70cm and larger,  previously with  glass front protection  have been replaced with  ones that uses plastic as front protection. Decided not to use these frame sizes for soft pastel paintings. 

        Please visit my facebook page to see some of my artworks. Likes and shares of my page are huge help!  

    Needing portraits or paintings done? Please enquire and leave a  message on my facebook page:  www.facebook.com/victorinoarts  or email me at vicfbautista@yahoo.com. Will ship internationally!