Portrait painting

My mom and I have been taking an oil painting class called Portrait Techniques of the Masters since last fall and we are learning so much.  I had not touched oil paints since high school and even then I only made two paintings. In class, we mostly paint  models, but after doing  four paintings of lovely people I do not know, I decided to try my hand at painting someone special to me. This is a portrait of my son Brendan at about age five (done from a photo, obviously, since he is now twelve).

We start the paintings with an underpainting to get the values in place. I was pretty good at this, I think, because it's like drawing, which is something I've always done.

Then we added more color each week...

 I loved this stage. It reminded me of an old hand colored photograph. I almost wanted to leave it like that.

 Adding more color seemed to "flatten" his face a bit.

In the photo I was working from, Brendan was holding a different bear. He requested that I paint Teddy Bob (a plush Steiff bear which was a favorite of his for a while) into the painting instead of the one which was there. He was also holding his video game which I didn't want to include. Since I didn't want to have to "make up" the hands and since Brendan's hands were much to big for the picture as they are now, I recruited my five year old nephew to be a "parts model"! I loved the hands in this one, but I turned the bear around.

                           

Our teacher showed me how to push the contrast and color up to get the form back. He's finished!

 

I love it! When we start the class again in the fall I will do a young Alex portrait.