Second Series, Portrait #1

Recently a former neighbor of mine asked me to draw portraits of her four children. Its been interesting working on portraits again, especially as it seems I have less time than before to draw. If I'm going to be drawing, I like to have a long stretch of time to be able to work, or I feel like I just keep starting over again, but somehow this has been proving more difficult lately.

I've narrowed this lack of time down to two things: Joshua being naughty, and my being pregnant. Sure, there are the usual things like laundry, dishes, getting Elora a snack every five minutes, and Joseph having a tighter schedule so he's not home to help with kids or cook.... but Joshua.

He has started pushing chairs around and playing in the sink, playing with things on the stove, putting toys in the toilet at least twice a day...every time I get him out of trouble, it seems there is something else to take care of. Yesterday he put lipstick all over his face, and later in the day he put eyeshadow around his mouth. Sure, I wasn't drawing that day, but it did make us late for church (as usual.) I'm just sayin'....I think he's getting close to those terrible twos.

As for being pregnant, well I frankly need to eat more often or I will get sick. I will have just spread out all of my pencils, rescued Josh from the toilet, and resumed my drawing, when I realize I need to eat something NOW or I will die. Since I can't have food near my drawing and risk spilling on it, nor can I sit somewhere else and risk the kids "helping" me with my portrait while I am otherwise occupied, this means I have to put it all away again.

So yeah, it's taking a while. Anyway, here is the first one. This is the family's youngest, who was born just prior to my neighbors moving. Isn't she cute?



Her most striking feature is her big blue eyes, which are very blue:



As usual, my scanner isn't picking up everything as I'd like. Her headband is lace in the photo; I did do a little texture on it which you can't see, so I will probably add some more later on. There is more color to her face at this point than is evident, but its coming along nicely:




In this scan, I skewed the scanner settings more toward red orange, trying to pick up more detail, but I'm not sure it worked. Her face actually has some nice blues, greens and purple in it, which are hard to see here. I've added more texture to the headband, but its still not really showing up. Her brown sweater has some dark blue in it to add some depth and color to it. Her mouth is very evidently wet in the photo, so I'm hoping to convey that before I'm finished.



This last scan actually has more color to the face, but since I didn't mess with the colors so much on the scanner, you can't tell. I wanted to finish it all in one sitting, and I was sure I could get done before lunch, not wanting to clear it all up and risk not finishing again. So I pushed through and payed for it by gagging in the sink when I was done. TMI? Again I'm frustrated that all the color and detail isn't showing up, but it doesn't look bad.



I stopped trying to mess with the headband, it was getting too distracting from the rest of the picture. Anyway.