Noureen, portrait, acrylic on canvas board, 12” x 12”

Art Musings

Mar 8

A few weeks ago I took an old 12” by 12” canvas board on which I had done a painting from a tutorial years ago and I applied a layer of gesso to it in preparation for a new painting. For a while now, my daughter has been wanting me to paint a portrait of her. Understandably, this was a tall order. Not only am I naturally intimidated by portraiture (as I don’t believe I’m that good at it), this was going to be a portrait of my daughter!! So no pressure…But I decided to just go for it. My brother has been sending me old photos of my daughter that pop up on his feed on his phone and I selected a photo of when she was about 2 years old as a reference. So hello cheeks!!! As my brother used to say, “her cheeks had cheeks”.

I started by toning the canvas with a mixture of magenta and white and drew an initial sketch where I attempted to get the facial proportions right. I gave myself a few days to do the painting, and I applied a technique, or rather, an approach that a recent favorite contemporary artist of mine, Sari Shayrack from “Not Sorry Art” uses all the time, which is, to aim for 70% accuracy. It is ok if not every detail or feature is rendered perfectly. I also applied her method of first blocking in the shadows and areas of mid tones and highlights, and pre mixing flesh tones with a combination of red, yellow and blue. Once I identified, the dark, medium and light areas, I set to work refining them but I avoided blending too much. In fact, I used flat brushes so that the brushstrokes would be more visible.

All in all, I was quite pleased with how it turned out and how quickly it all came together. It took me a total of 4 days from initial sketch to final details. Once again, I realized that when I work quickly with dynamic brushstrokes I end up with a much more painterly piece of art, with lots of movement and I enjoy the process a lot more because I’m not agonizing over every little detail. Is every bit of the painting perfect? No of course not. I especially dislike the way I painted her shirt, but the focus is her face so I just let it slide. The painting might not be feature by feature true to the photo, that is, there might be certain inconsistencies here and there, but I got the majority of it right. I captured the main aspects or proportions, the roundness of the cheeks, the small but full mouth and her wide nose. When I think about my first ever portrait that I did years ago (of Frida Kahlo) and this one of my daughter, I feel I have come a long way. For a quick study that was created in the span of less than a week, it’s pretty good.