These are Simon's children, a delightful commission using two different photographs and painted onto a 40 x 30cm box canvas in acrylic paints. First I sketched their cheeky faces onto the canvas and blocked in a warm red background to give them shape and make sure I was happy with the composition and relative sizes. I mixed my flesh colours next and started to fill in the skin tones but for some reason my paint started misbehaving. I know a bad workman always blames his tools but honestly, the glazes were sticking and drying where I didn't want them to and lifting off when I thought they had dried. I packed up, came back the next day and persevered adding more titanium white which almost completely obliterated the shadows but at least it evened out their lovely clear complexions. I painted the background chocolate brown at the client's request and set to work adding layers of different colours to the skin tones and hair. This portrait was meant to be in a looser style but due to the paint behaving the way it did I had to apply many more layers as I do with the highly detailed ones, so although it is slightly looser in style the main features are quite detailed. Before I placed my signature I reviewed all the photos on screen again and realised the hair colour wasn't quite right. A few flicks of yellow ochre and raw umber later and I'm happy this portrait is complete!
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