Grandchild portrait

 After a break for a few years, I've had an opportunity to add another portrait to the series of grandchildren I've been drawing for my friend since 2008!
This time, I decided not to document the whole drawing process, but I did want to show you the final drawing, as well as the copy a few weeks ago, when I thought I was done, but realized it didn't look right at all. First, here is the final drawing:

final version

I loved and disliked the photo I was given. It was perfect in that the lighting was nice- no weird shadows or indoor yellow lighting- and it had a beautiful background that I could use well in a drawing. The girl is wearing a cute outfit that compliments her strawberry blonde hair and coloring, and it wasn't hard to see any details on her face.
The only thing I wasn't sure about was her expression. She's a cute little girl, but in the photo she's kind of pulling her head back (resulting in the folds on her neck that I'm guessing aren't always there) and the weird little smirk of her mouth. She had a smile in her eyes but wasn't sure if I could make her look happy with her mouth so pursed.
I was afraid that if I recreated it faithfully, her family might think it might not look like her, because I doubt she makes that face all the time.
So, despite the nice atmospheric conditions, when I first looked at it I thought, "Really? This is the picture they want?"
I'd had the experience with another drawing where the photo had been taken from too close up, so it was obvious the girl's face was distorted by the camera. Sure enough, when I drew it they asked me to draw it again, saying it didn't look like her at all. I've realized that, when you know the person in the photo you might not notice if it looks a little "off", but if someone (me) only has this picture for reference, the wrong parts might get emphasized! (I'm sure that's why professional portrait artists take the photos themselves, and make sure they have plenty of them..and they usually see the model in person as well.)
 I was really worried that this might happen again, so I wanted to get this right the first time!
On top of that, I had a ridiculous time finding moments when I could work on this: I use daylight, and I usually open the door to get enough light. We have a stormdoor, but I still don't want to leave the door open if there's a blustery wind blowing around the edges, plus if it's overcast the light isn't really bright enough either. On top of that, little Eli has decided walking on the kitchen table is the funnest thing ever, especially if mommy has stuff out to work on!
Finally, though, I thought I was done. I photographed the drawing, scanned it into the computer, and realized it didn't look like her at all!

First version

So I made notes of any specific problems I could see (eyes weren't dark enough, lashes needed to be longer, head looked too round, eyes weren't "happy" enough) and tried to improve them. I had already sprayed the drawing with workable fixative, which means you can still draw on top of it but it's hard to erase anything, or blend with the pencil under the fixative layer.
A few days later, I rescanned and it still didn't look right. This time I did what I should have done first..I put the photo on top of the drawing at half transparency then found everywhere that things didn't line up.
Sometimes when I do a portrait, I will start out with a piece of tracing paper and mark where things are going to be- the corners of eyes, points where the hair starts, etc., so as expected most things lined up pretty well. But through the drawing process, things get moved around.
Anyway, I saw that I'd somehow narrowed her neck on the right side, which contributed to her head looking too fat. Additionally, I had not made her hair tall enough, and had made her hair too thick on the left side, which also contributed to her face looking too round. I was glad to see I could fix it that way, instead of trying to redraw her whole face!
Finally, the line of the mouth had been changed as I worked on it. Subconsiously, I wanted her to be smiling more, and I'd moved the edges of the mouth up acordingly. Strangely, when I fixed all these small things- the neck, the shape of the hair, and the mouth line- as well as fine tuned some of the colors, it suddenly looked right.
So here are the two pictures again, so you can see the differences:



first version



final version

It's so weird that it looks like I changed the shape of the whole face, when I really didn't touch it! The colors look richer because the sun was brighter when I took the photo..and I really did darken the eyes.
 I hope that this was worth the trouble, and that it really looks like this sweet little girl.