Welcome to my pet and family portrait blog. If you have commissioned a portrait you can see how it is progressing. If you would like to commission me to paint your pet, family or friend then visit my site at www.katetugwellportraits.com
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Thursday 22 March 2012

70th Birthday Portrait









My next commission is for this lady's 70th birthday as a gift from her husband. It's a bit of a challenge as I have these two black and white photos and some very small photos taken in colour years ago. I am having to turn this into a colour portrait with very little colour reference but I love a challenge! I even decided to merge the two photos as her face on the larger photo has a little bit more detail to work with. I started by creating a tonal under-painting in paynes grey in order to get the structure right, making sure the shadows and shapes were in the correct places. I didn't get her right eye quite right but that can be corrected when I paint the colour. This is acrylic on an A1 size board so the background took some painting! I merged black with white, ultramarine blue and red. I'm going to paint her dress blue so I want the background to echo these colours and in doing so create cohesion within the painting. I will probably add more brown at a later stage or change the background all together if it doesn't work.

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