This painting was begun more than five years ago. There might be a blog entry to remind me when. It got stalled because my photo references were blurry. But, the thing is, I love this image of my two youngest and decided to paint it. I didn’t imagine the likenesses would be such a chore. Other more inspiring and clear ideas called me away but now I am setting a goal to drag out the few unfinished works and aiming to solve their challenges.

I first covered the faces and other flesh areas with titanium white. This is very opaque which will take me back to a sort of blank canvas. I let it dry while I worked on sketches to get their likenesses good. Now, if you look closely, I have applied a flesh tone mixed with a transparentizer to allow many translucent layers to build up, creating a supple and realistic flesh area. Next, I used a combination of titanium, flake or lead white and a tiny amount of Naples yellow. With this mixture, I carefully sculpted areas of light that now begins to add the three dimensional shapes that will build the likenesses. As portrait artists, we must understand this. It is the way the light falls on a surface that enables us to recognize features. Both of these girls have almost finished raising their own children but I can still see them at this stage. All my girls have been a joy.

I had this set to include both photos but I never seem to be able to get a double photo without a lot of effort. Sorry

Yes, little by little I am getting back to my routine. There are fewer hours in a day or maybe the hours are shorter and so I find it difficult to get as much done. My daughter, in her wisdom, tells me I have a case of Covid depression, but rarely has any sort of depression gotten to me. So, my decision was to set a goal of completing current works and also actively revisiting unfinished paintings. I am in a good habit of not accumulating many unfinished paintings. They are set aside only when I cannot solve some problem or bring the work up to my level of satisfaction. This subject is of my two youngest daughters. I have always loved the pose but the original photo is very blurry. I am using other references which is proving to be more challenging than I expected. I finally have the likenesses worked out.now I am concentrating on values, skin tones and all the other details that will bring this to life, at least for me. I sewed these eyelet dresses and they are hanging in in my studio to inspire the beauty of fabric in oil paint, even ones as simple as these. After all, they aren’t velvet or lace or brocade! You may smile to know the younger girl was often expected to need intervention, medically, in order for her to reach the doctors growing curve on her health chart. I resisted and eventually she passed her sister up by quite a lot. She is at least five foot ten now and my ability to tower over her is long gone since I have lost three inches! ☹️ This portrait is unique for my work. I rarely focus back so far instead of filling the canvas. These two just held hands when I snapped the shutter and I wanted that to be the attention getter. Hope to be back to my normal output and creativity soon, but I have two more unfinished masterpieces waiting for my attention. Shalom, Diana