Posthumous Portrait of a Lady

 

A Posthumous Portrait of a Lady

This is the finished portrait of the lady that I was working on during my last post.  

It is drawn in coloured pencil on Canson Mi-Teintes paper. I used the reverse less textured side. Well I call it the reverse. I don't know which side is the official reverse. 

I enjoy working on the textured side but it is hard to get the detail in a portrait that is only 5x7 inches. This portrait is done on that size to match the portrait of her grandson (which I do not intend to publish for my personal reasons). 

There were a couple of difficulties to overcome doing this portrait. One was the quality of the photographs, which I think I wrote about last time. (I may have been oblique about it.) The second difficulty is related. The lady is wearing rimless eyeglasses and it was hard to see where they ended. So if you notice a few unexplained dark patches and shadows, that is the reason. 

It was fun capturing her mischievous smile. At one point I was afraid it had turned into a snarl so I had to take some time away from it so I could get a fresh look and see where I was going wrong. These things can be so subtle. 

I have posted the portrait to the lady's daughter and I planned to include some prints for her sisters. Unfortunately the printer that I use for art prints decided that it couldn't recognise the black cartridge that it was printing with nicely a week earlier. I am hoping that it will work again if I wait. I don't want to replace a cartridge if I don't need to - they are expensive. 

 

A Portrait Work in Progress

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A Posthumous Portrait Work in Progress 

I have been working on a posthumous portrait of a lady. I am drawing in coloured pencils on my favourite Canson Mi Teintes paper in aurora. 

As it is a posthumous portrait the photos that I am working from are not of the best quality but that is my forte. The first time I did a posthumous portrait was for a friend of mine, a Hindu man. His mother in law had died and the only photo they had of her was a very faded black and white one. His family members had given him the job of getting good copies of the photograph so each branch of the family could have a copy. So he asked me to try and do a portrait from it. This was back in the days before Photoshop. 

It was extremely difficult to see the features. But I did my best for my friend. 

He took a professional photograph of the portrait and sent copies to the family members and I was so surprised to get the message back that I had got a good likeness. After succeeding with that one I have the confidence to believe I can do anything! And as I say on my website, it is when your photographs are poor quality that you really need a portrait drawn or painted.