This is a portrait I completed a few weeks ago of a man fishing. The man in the image is the client’s father-in-law and has passed away a few years back. The painting was commissioned as a birthday gift to his son, the client’s husband. His father did not like photographs taken of him hence the reference was quite blurry and lacking in detail. I did however have some photos of his son, who looks just like him. There was a sense of nostalgia in the photograph and I wanted to keep it this way in the painting, so I did not sharpen the image too much.
I thought the blues work well with the skin tones and make them pop in the painting. The painting is square at 30 x 30 cm in size. I worked with acrylics starting with a line sketch of a watery mixture of yellow ochre and venetian red. I limited my palette to a number of colours at venetian red, yellow ochre, cadmium lemon, cerrulean blue, ultramarine blue, cadmium red and white. I wanted the painting to feel warm as blues can cool things down a bit, so I used venetian red in my blue mixtures.
The client wanted the painting to hang as is without framing, so I put a string at back for hanging.
The client was very pleased with the finished painting:
I love it, thanks so much. It’s beautiful. You are very good I’d highly recommend you….Hi Ivana, I received the painting. Honestly I love it, amazing work, the scanned copy doesn’t do it justice. It’s amazing. Thank you so much.
Maria, County Dublin, Ireland
Client photo 
Finished painting 
Work progress 