On painting the departed....

For the past few weeks, I've been working on a portrait of my great-niece and her mother who passed away three months ago. My niece asked for a portrait of her mother so she could see her mother's face every day. That's more than enough incentive to attempt your best work.

This project has been challenging in a number of ways. After looking at photos of this young woman, none of the pictures of her alone captured what I wanted to portray. I settled on a picture of the mother and child together. It's a very casual photo with my great-niece sitting on her mother's lap. Her mother leans to the side to smile at the photographer and the girl's eyes are looking to the side towards her mother. Very charming, I thought.

Sketching the mother was the hardest part of the entire process---which suprised me. I would have thought it might be more emotional as I saw her face emerge from the canvas in paint, but I found myself tremendously saddened as I sketched her face, her eyes, her smile. What a loss. What a tragedy. I want this portrait to convey the young woman in a happier state and show the bond between mother and daughter. It's quite something to think about a young child only being able to see a painting of her mother every day rather than the mother of flesh and blood.

So, surprisngly to me, the process on this particular painting has been a positive one. Above, I've posted a picture of the painting in process and eventually will add the original photo and the final portrait. First of all, I wanted this painting to be about the people and have simplified the background, deleting the background of the original photo and painting in a loose, shadowed grey/teal wash. I also changed the colors of clothing to a more subdued palette---all this with an intent to focus on their faces. The finest details of the painting are in their faces, especially their eyes--all in an attempt to draw the viewers gaze there first.

Painting is a joy: mixing the palette, placing the first details, seeing a face come to life. Generally, I start with the cheeks and nose, laying in the underpainting of shadow and placing the features. As I build on the underpainting, placing lighter and darker values to define the face, the subject begins to emerge.

With this particular portrait, I started with the mother's face and had that fleshed out in a few hours, but hadn't added the eyes. While my first thought was to wait to paint her eyes the next day when I was rested, I discovered that I couldn't stop painting until her eyes looked out from the canvas. Only then would I know that this painting could be good.

As the painting progressed, I found myself thinking more and more about this lost young woman. Would she like what I had created? What will happen to this painting over time? I imagine that my great-niece will keep it with her throughout her life...at least I like to think so. Maybe someday she will have children of her own and this is how they will know their grandmother. Interesting, not to mention rewarding thoughts for an artist.