This is a portrait painting in acrylic on stretched canvas I created a few weeks ago. The painting is of a happy young boy called Tom. Tom sadly passed away recently and his portrait was commissioned for his grandfather. The two shared a wonderful relationship full of inside jokes and laughter and Tom’s grandfather wanted to have an image on his wall to remind him of this. He mentioned he wanted this keepsake of Tom to his son Ken, who contacted me to commission Tom’s portrait for his Dad. It was all to be a great surprise for Tom’s grandfather.
Ken emailed me two photographs of Tom and I suggested this one. It had a lovely yellow light coming from behind Tom and illuminating parts of his face. I simplified the background to a dark toned one with the yellow light to reflect onto Tom’s cheek. I added a few splashes in blue throughout the painting to contrast with the yellows.
I worked in acrylics keeping the painting warm toned overall with colours of golden brown and yellow as a backdrop to Tom’s pale complexion.
I worked in a few stages on the portrait, starting with a line sketch in yellow ochre. I then blocked in the background with some basic colours to create a background before moving onto to colour blocking the boy’s face, skin tones and hair. The painting is medium in size at 45 x 35 cm and it worked quite well as Tom’s face filled most of the canvas. I worked on fine grain stretched canvas.
Ken was very happy with the resulting portrait of his nephew and collected it from my studio here in Kilcock. He gave it to his father as a surprise and emailed me later to tell me the reaction which was incredible:
Hi Ivana,
Ken after gifting his father with the painting of Tom, Kilkenny, Ireland, May 2024
I just wanted to thank you so much for the picture. It is brilliant and my father loves it. He was sitting at the table when I arrived and he was not aware that I had collected the picture, so when I placed it in his hands and he had his first look and instantly he started to well up with tears. The picture is a perfect reflection of Tom and it just brought back so many happy memories for my Dad.
Thank you very much.
I had the painting framed for my client in a simple tray frame made of a neutral coloured limed frame. There is a lovely shadow gap around the canvas and the profile of the frame is square. I wanted the frame to be quite simple to compliment the painting.
