I met Ella & Josh with their grandparents in Arundel this summer to take a photoshoot - funny story, but one for another day…! Anyway, we talked a little about preferred styles of art and decided, as this joint portrait is a surprise for their daughter’s birthday, that I would work along the lines that the parents enjoy modern graffiti art. Children are always some of the hardest subjects to paint as they have very delicate skin tones and their life story hasn’t yet been etched onto their faces so a strong graphic, Pop Art approach doesn’t always work. I created a few sketches, combined the expressions of two photos, played about with some compositions and decided a slightly squarer option would work best. So after pulling their faces closer together I pushed some guidelines onto Fisher 400 pastel paper… this is a really rough paper - it eats your pastels - but I like it for loose and expressionistic strokes and chose it as I don’t want to blend the colours as I would with other styles or on less ‘toothy’ grounds. I selected a few warm skin tone colours first and blocked a few in, then added small areas of white for my lightest contrast. Often, I like to put the darkest darks in next but as the skin tones need to visually blend without any smudging and the marks need to be kept pure, I opted to stay with similar tones but different hues. The purple was much more of a contrast than anticipated when placed next to the other flesh colours and the darker pink needed toning down. As soon as I started to put the lighter hair colour in it started to make a bit more sense but it was at this stage I decided to move away from the faces and put in some bolder marks. By working on the clothing I could start to play with texture, shape and tone in a more deliberate manner and take the emphasis away from the stark mark-making on their faces. I only met Josh and Ella for a short time and although it was quite eventful, I wanted to get a sense of their personalities in the portrait. They were shy, having first met me, but I sensed they were thoughtful, kind, not boisterous… There’s still a way to go, a lot of staring, walking away and tweaking to get the balance right without over-working it but I think I’m winning…
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