Prom Portrait of My Daughter

By Trisha Bond

Part One

This week I have begun a painting that is near and dear to my heart - a closeup of my beautiful daughter on the night of her prom.  One of my challenges for this painting was to try to paint someone who I know personally in order to pick up on subtleties of features and placement and to see how close I can get to the original. 

I managed to successfully render an image 2x the size of the photograph with careful measurements and reference points onto a 12x16 canvass (slightly larger than my last portrait of Amanda Seyfried).  

Original rendering, too close to the
left edge of the canvass.

However, after initially penciling the image onto canvas, my instructor pointed out that she was seated too close to the left edge.   So, I began transitioning the drawing about 2" to the right achieving a much more balanced feel.  

I also noticed the angle of her right cheek needed reshaping along with the position of her chin.  As well, her mouth was positioned too far to the  left side of the canvass.

Time Elapsed: 1 hour

Medium:

Again, I will be using acrylic paints; ultramarine blue, cadmium red medium, cadmium yellow light, magenta, and titanium white.

Although, I have a wide variety of paintbrushes, I am finding that I am mainly using a small selection;  two flats, one round and a small liner for finer details.

Handy Tool:

I'm a big fan of stay-wet palettes.  It allows me to retain the colours I've carefully mixed without drying out between sessions at my easle.  I find colour mixing is an art in and of itself and can be difficult to reproduce at this stage in my painting journey.  Therefore, this type of palette reduces my amount of frustration caused by trying to match a new batch of colour to those already dried on the canvass (which is now darker than it is when wet).  You can find these palettes at most art stores.  They're easy to use and I'm sure its save us me valuable dollars in paint.

Next Post coming soon... Part 2: Blocking it all in.