E family portraits (7)

The E family have been my clients since about 2007. They recently commissioned me to draw their last seven grandkids! They didn't need them anytime soon, so I worked on them throughout the summer, finishing the last one in early August in between my personal projects.
I did have to re-do one (the mom wanted me to use a different photo but hadn't specified this beforehand). It turned out that the second drawing looked better anyway, so it was all good.
I was glad to be able to work on these in the spring and summer months, because I can get much better photos of the artwork. In the winter the photos always turn out too dark and the colors are off. Maybe I should invest in some good studio lights? It's definitely incentive to get things done before the winter.

These first three boys were all completed close together. I liked working with the photo of the middle boy in green the best, but think the drawing of the far right one turned out the best. I had to laugh when I realized the boy on the left (with the tongue sticking out) was a boy I'd drawn as an infant. In that first drawing/photo, he'd also had his tongue sticking out. They must have wanted a different picture of him, but I thought it was funny that he was doing the exact same thing!

For this next boy I was given three pictures and could choose which one I liked.  I picked this one because the other two photos had his shirt collar partially covering his face. The grandparents mentioned that their favorite facial feature was his dimples, so I had to study the other two pictures to see where to put them: they didn't show up when I printed this photo to look at. I was glad they'd mentioned it, or I might not have known to draw them in!

For this girl I wasn't sent a digital photo; instead they sent me a small wallet size picture! I scanned it and printed a big copy to look at, but it was hard to make out a lot of the details. I was really worried that it didn't look like her, but they said she looked just right. Personally, I think her lips are wrong, but I'm not gonna bring it up.  Plus my camera has that thing where it makes yellows look to garish, so this isn't a completely accurate representation of the real drawing.

Finally, I was given some portraits of a pair of cute twins, a boy and a girl. This is where I had several photos, and I assumed I could pick the ones I like best. Apparently, the grandparents thought that too, and were surprised when the mom asked  me to re-do the girl. I was glad I picked the right picture for the boy! He turned out really good.

This is the first version I drew of the girl. I had pulled up the two different photos of her on the computer, and my family helped me pick the facial expression they thought was the cutest. It turns out the mom wanted the other picture because it shows the baby's teeth, which I totally understand as a mom.

Here is the second picture of the twin girl. I am not sure if the color was really better on this second picture, or if I just got a better photo, but I like the brighter colors for sure.



On to the next project!

library time

Earlier this summer, we were able to have fun going to the weekly library time. It was one day a week, but it was a whole two hours each time! At first, I thought that sounded a little long, but they filled up the time with crafts, snacks, and outside time as well as reading. The kids all had fun and made lots of neat things, plus we checked out lots of books.

We have some cool Chinese dragon puppets, which are now hanging up in our toy room. (Also, this is our lilac bush!) We also had someone come talk about karate one time and the kids made cool headbands just like karate kid...Elora stayed an extra hour to make hers just right.

Another time everyone made some kites out of string and paper bags. At first Josh was being grumpy and didn't want his picture taken, but then he let me take one of him by himself. They flew pretty good! It just wasn't that windy when we took the pictures.




There was one week we had a fun pancake activity! The librarian made pancakes, then all the kids got to do relay races with them outside on the football field (The town library is also the school library, and is on school grounds.)

They all had lots of fun!

We even got to bring our cousins with us to the last two library days, and everyone got lots of prizes and even ice cream! We'll definitely be doing library time again next summer.

Josh's 9yr old pictures at Cedar Breaks

We took Josh's birthday pictures at Cedar Breaks while we were visiting Utah. ( We're tired of grass backgrounds, and we had to top the graffiti from last year). I thought the green trees and red rocks would look awesome with Josh's hair. It was also the afternoon, just like when we took Jonah's pictures, but somehow we were able to find lots of good spots for some photos. Maybe it was a little cloudier, and maybe there were more shaded places, but we got an overabundance of photos for Josh!

Of course, part of that high number is because Josh insisted that for every smiling picture, he wanted a "serious" picture. Surprisingly, a lot of the serious pictures looked better than the smiling ones (something to do with less shadows on the face). But because of Josh's big eyes, some of the serious ones looked pretty funny too.

A. The serious ones look better here. Or funnier, depending on your view.



 At first, Josh wasn't smiling very realistically (he was trying too hard), and it was driving me nuts, because they were nice locations. And my visions of red rock landscapes behind Joshua were hard to realize, due to the different settings needed to expose the person as well as the background. These pictures ended up looking almost fake because of how much they needed to be manipulated after the fact.

B. The bottom two are nice but maybe a little strange; the light on the top two is nice.

C The wildflowers were blooming everywhere while we were there, and we didn't want to pass up an opportunity to use them in one or two pictures. See, these 'serious' ones look pretty nice, right?



 
 D There were a lot of leaning-on-tree poses, but they worked pretty good. I wish Josh was smiling in the upper left one, the light is really nice in it.



E.
As the afternoon progressed (we went on the Alpine Loop trail, it was really fun) Josh got better at smiling realistically, and we started to get a few better faces. I love his laugh in the flowers, though the arms on the hips pose is a little silly.


 

F There were  a lot of neat staircases, so we had to get in on that. I think the bottom right might be the best face, though I like the background in the top right.






G We had to try this one in black and white too:


H  We got in a few good smiles near the end. I like the top left maybe.




I And we finished out the day strong. These are all pretty good.



J Oh, and lets not forget our couple of horizontal pictures. They were alright, though the light is bad on the bottom.




What do you think?

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Jonah's 7yr pictures up Cedar Mountain

This year I promised Jonah we could take his birthday pictures when we went up Cedar mountain, on our visit to Grandma's house this year. I was picturing lots of aspens (which we rarely see in South Dakota) and how good they'd look with Jonah's blue eyes and blonde hair. I knew we'd be up the mountain at a less than ideal time- midday- because that's when my class reunion would be, and we wouldn't really have time another day.
As expected, the light was really bright and hard to work with. We got lots of fun pictures of everyone while we were there, but when I took Jonah's portraits, it was hard to find good spots for a really nice picture. But we did get a few! It didn't help that he's so wiggly and can't focus.

A. This group definitely has the best light, at least on the top two; his face isn't too shadowy and the background isn't to blown out and white.  These don't have the best smiles of all, but I'll probably pick his wall portrait from this group.
























B. We had to get a few horizontal pics to mix it up.

 C. The trees are pretty and he's smiling good, but the light is meh. Especially in that bottom right one. The top right is probably the best.


D. I like the location of the top two pictures a lot. The bottom ones, I took like ten pictures there, and these were the best ones. Silly Jonah.



Which do you like?