This is a portrait of a very special little boy, he is my son’s Godson,Terran, brother to Miles and son to Bonnie and Bryce. I painted this using acrylic paint on a 12″ x 18″ panel. It’s interesting as an artist to switch from painting landscapes and trees to painting people. I like to paint trees a lot and and quite often consider the finished tree portraits as metaphors for people, but I do like to actually paint people sometimes. The subtlety of expression in a portrait has always been a challenge for me worth tackling; just the tiniest flick of the brush around the mouth or eyes can completely change the mood of the subject. Also the varied hues of skin tone can in itself be worthy of a lifetime of study, this digital image doesn’t do the actual color and temperature of this painting any justice.
I have always been enthralled with Andrew Wyeth’s paintings, particularly his portraits. https://andrewwyeth.com/gallery/ The careful study and lovingly rendered paintings of his friends and neighbors captured something of the soul of where he lived his life. It’s fairly easy to study a landscape, sky or water image but people are busy and it’s hard to get them to sit still, plus many people don’t like being studied and looked at so intensely.
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