This is one my recent commissioned family drawings. The couple in the portrait are my client’s parents, now deceased, and my client wanted a keepsake portrait of them to display in her home.
Her mum Tess loved the outdoors, flowers and gardens. Her father Larry was a vet and the couple always had animals around them. Claire, my client, had a photo of her father sitting on a bench with his two dogs Zen, the golden retriever, and Rhys, the collie. She really loved this photo and wondered could I add her mum into the picture. She sent me some photos of her parents and I added her mum to the photo sitting beside Larry. I extended the width of the bench and adjusted her mum’s standing photo into a sitting one.
The drawing was a good size at 40 x 50 cm. I worked in graphite pencil on paper, first sketching out the outline sketch and then shading the entire portrait based on the reference photos. The photos were quite small and all were hard copies, which I scanned in-house and enlarged on my computer. This gave me a little more detail, but the drawing was quite challenging due to the size of the photos. It was great to have a lot of different shots of both mother and father, which gave me a good idea of their likeness.
The client was delighted with the result and has it displayed in her home now. I framed the drawing before posting and took some photos of the finished framed drawing in my studio.
