Portrait commission final... Mission accomplished!

The client called me this morning to express her satisfaction with the "close to final" version published in my blog yesterday...

... needless to say, this was music to my ears! You never know with portraiture... and I certainly wouldn't force a customer to take a picture that "doesn't hit home"!

These kids reside in British Columbia, therefore I didn't have the prerogative to study them in person. The videos I had at my disposal helped compensate in part for this lack. In the end, I decided to express the boy's exuberance and the little girl's obvious determination. The distance between the two was meant to create a tension. The placement of the smaller girl on the right helped increase her importance to the viewer, in my view.

Note: Trying to get the best lighting for this picture, I couldn't avoid subtle cast shadows from trees... however, this was an excellent opportunities to test "high res" photography with my new camera...

Note to self: "With this project and the most recent ones, I have come to realize that I can obtain smooth blending easily both on raw canvas and on primed canvas despite fast drying acrylics and the dryer in-house climate in the winter time. Although my inclination is still to go the route of expressionism, I see an opportunity in mixing styles (expressionism and realism) to create compelling and colorful images. In terms of mark making, my next frontier is splattering!"