Portrait of Olive Grace

Description

OVAL PORTRAIT of ‘OLIVE GRACE’ FROM PHOTO

I received a request to paint a life-like portrait of a woman’s 50-year dead grandmother when she was a young child. Interestingly enough, I worked as artist in a photographic studio 10 years and have a wide acquaintance with old photographs and enhancing them, so the project was only marginally intimidating. My emphasis with anything photographic is in making subjects more three-dimensional.  My client wanted her own picture of her beloved grandmother, as another sibling owned the original one.

My client lives in another state. She had visited my studio several times and bought a gel pen painting before. She had the vision for a piece of fine art, as well as a likeness.

So, of course she wanted the feel and sense of an old photograph. I received an 8 x 10 black and white with all the colors described to me verbally. This picture is one hundred percent watercolor painting.

When she visited my studio on a trip, we found samples and examples of the desired colors. Her color sense was exact, and her willingness to work with me as artist was an artist’s dream. From a certain finished size, I had to work backwards in designing the figure in the space, space for the painting semblance of the original oval mat, its surrounding pattern, actual matting, and frame width. Every aspect of frame, mat, background colors, dress color, hair, eye, complexion color were described. We picked watercolor paint as the medium to accurately express the look.

In the middle of the process, I needed more color input. Then my client shared a copy of an oil painting  that reminded her of the right flesh colors, and I fleshed in the right shades from that.

Imagine my joy when she told me that the grandmother that was always in her heart was now in her home, too, and how over-the-top happy she was with the portrait.