Just Tom's Musings Thoughts on art, programming, and whatever else.

Portrait of my boys

Portrait of 2 boys in red

This is my latest painting.  These are 2 of my sons, Eli and Garrett.  They both decided to wear red shirts, and I kinda liked the idea.  I ended up pushing a lot of green into the fence to compliment the red.   I think it turned out pretty well..   although in the painting they look older than they really are.

On this one, I was trying to go pretty tight and really go for the realism.  I had been looking at some of the wonderful portraits from the portrait society of America.  These get me really excited.

It’s definitely the best skin tones I’ve done so far.  I’ve also been looking a lot at Bouguereau lately – the master of figurative painting.  Neutral grey is the key to painting convincing skin tones.  I have relied too much in the past on burnt sienna, which is a wonderful earth tone red – but is on the orange side.  Here I’m mixing naphtol red with b. sienna – and that is better. But you have to temper everything with grey.. that’s the key.

Garrett’s face (on the left) was repainted 3 times, and Eli’s was done twice.  It’s challenging because it works best to paint the face in one sitting – while the paint is still wet.  So you have to nail it in one shot.  It’s really hard to make adjustments later, because you can’t blend into what’s there once it’s dry.   I haven’t quite got the blends perfect, but I’m getting closer.