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!
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!
