I worked on this drawing back in July this year. It is a family portrait drawing of parents and their two children. Their children live in Australia and they don’t have a clear photograph of all four of them together. I worked from many different photos to create one composition. The challenge was to make sure that light was coming from the same side, having to change this as I moved through the drawing. I also had to make sure they are all looking as natural as possible, as if standing beside each other and not separate.
Megan, my client, the daughter in the portrait, contacted me with her query back in May. She wanted a special present for her father for their parents’ wedding anniversary. She gave me a lot of photos and they were all great. Her father’s photos were a little more complex, as she wanted him portrayed without his beloved cap which he wear in most photos, and with a wide smile on his face, which we couldn’t really get in any of the photos. I had to work from several references for him. Megan and her mom were very happy with the portrait and felt I captured everybody’s likeness:
Hi Ivana! That looks great thanks so much! My mam is delighted with that…
Megan, Australia
The format of the drawing was wide to accommodate the four people standing beside each other. It is 20 x 40 cm in size drawn in graphite pencil on Fabriano 50%cotton 300 gms paper. I removed the background as it was not of importance and I felt it would interfere with the portrait of the lovely family.
I started with a line sketch to establish likenesses and then moved onto shading each member of the family. I like to move around the page rather than working on just one person at a time. I feel it creates a better balance when it comes to the darkness of shadows and lightness of highlights.
I mounted the finished drawing in a neutral coloured mount, after applying a thin coat of fixative for protection. I took some photographs of the drawing in my studio before posting it off to the client’s mom before she and her husband travelled to the US to celebrate their anniversary.
