A challenging commission
This is the latest commissioned portrait I just finished. Ella is a sweet little girl who is actually older than she appears here. The family had a portrait done of their firstborn years ago by one of the pastel atists who inspired me to start working in the medium myself. His name was Steve Grey and he passed away a few years ago at a relatively young age. Ella’s family had wanted portraits done of their two daughters as well, but wanted to keep the ages of all the kids at about the same age. This meant that I had to work from older photos supplied by the family. This is always difficult, but I did get to meet Ella in person and photograph her to see the coloring of her eyes, skin and hair. I also got a glimpse of her personality which helped me create her likeness.
After completing the drawing I sent an image to the family for approval of the overall composition. I then painted Ella’s face almost to the finish and had it approved by the family before moving on the dress. I knew this would be a time consuming challenge because of the intricate floral pattern. Because of the many folds I had to make sure the value of each flower was correct so that the lighting on the dress would read accurately. The only way I could tackle this was by being very methodical. Each day I knew I would only get a small area done. I had to be mentally prepared so I would not be frustrated at the end of a working session about the lack of progress being made. One fold for the day was progress I had to be happy with!
While I normally prefer to stand while painting, for this task I sat on a stool and listened to talk radio. It took almost a week, but the dress was finally finished. I was then ready to move on to the background which I had only underpainted with loose color washes up to then. I thought this part would be the easy part, but I was wrong. I struggled with every blade of grass and could not figure out why it was so difficult until I realized that I had trouble going from being so detailed and tight on the dress to being loose and impressionistic for the background!
Every day I entered the studio with dread, being unsure about how to commence. Finally, in utter frustration, I took the painting outside and brushed all but the figure completely off the paper. I use Wallis paper which is very forgiving and can be reworked easily. Pastel dust was flying everywhere on my back patio. It was extremely liberating!
Once I had the painting back up on the easel the tightness, the fear and dread were gone. I fired in with abandon and finally let loose with some strong colors and decisive strokes. I figured I had nothing to lose, since I had already brushed it off once and could do it again. This did the trick and the painting finally came together. The family was thrilled with the end result and I am currently working on Ella’s sister’s portrait. Yes, she is wearing a cute little dress with a flower pattern but not nearly as intricate as this one. But there ARE a lot of folds…
