Coco the Cat was a beautiful longhair calico with a face just meant for colored pencil painting and I was pleased to have a chance to paint this memorial cat portrait for Coco's owners. She was "helping" her owner with an upholstery project when this picture was taken. As with my human portraits, I enjoy depicting the character of the subject...Coco certainly had plenty of character.
Garden Girl features my favorite portrait elements - strong light and shadow and a subject with character. I started this colored pencil portrait on a cold, winter day in Chicago...somehow it seemed to brighten the grayness of the day. The model for it is one of my favorites - a granddaughter who's wisdom, grace AND whimsy seems to shine through in every image we have of her. This setting of this painting looks realistic, but is actually more of a decorative pattern, like wallpaper. I used an Icarus Board and Prismacolor wax-based pencils for this piece. The Icarus is a heated drawing board that makes the pencils soft and blend-y. It keeps my hands warm in my studio, too!
Julius is a commission piece done from a photo that his mom supplied. When she sent it to me to ask if I could use it for a painting, I wanted to shout, "How could I not?" This little guy oozed character...something that is so important to me in my portrait work. And although it didn't really have strong light and shadow, that HAIR!!! It really was standing up all around his head just like that. Plus, he had sand on his face, hands, legs, shirt...what a perfect mess to depict in colored pencil. My commissioned portraits are generally done from photos that I take myself, but sometimes the exception results in a moment in time captured as only a parent can see it.
Sisters was the very first colored pencil (Prismacolor pencils) work I ever did when I transitioned from watercolor as a medium. I was at our lake house alone when I started this, working on the background first. And why start small? At 20" x 26" I had lots of paper to cover. The process was so addicting that I almost couldn't sleep that week. The subjects are my daughters at the ages of some of their children NOW. The great thing about portraits as opposed to photos is that I never feel the need to file them away as the subjects age and replace them with new ones. Art is art and it hangs on the wall, capturing the moment and the age forever.
