Born in 1899 - my Gran when she was a young woman

I've been overseas recently to attend my son's wedding. It was quick trip - just four weeks and as I wanted to keep up my portrait work, I took a very old photo of my grandmother along with me to work on whenever I had a moment.

I was only intending to do a rough draft of this portrait - it was more a means of 'getting to know you' than a finished item. However, it seemed to grow a life of it's own during those four weeks away.

I love how it turned out, even though I still feel it could have been better.

What do you think?

Today is 23rd July 2011 and it's my sister's birthday - Happy Birthday Sis!

It's taken me a bit longer than a month to complete my latest portrait. I've worked so hard on this one. It's a commission and I wanted it to be just right. It's difficult to know when something is completed but I think this one is. Tomorrow Tony will spray it for me and on Monday, I hand it to the new owner. Bye bye pretty lady, I've enjoyed working on you, but it's time for us to part....

A beautiful little girl

It's amazing! I've actually finished this one before the month was out and I only had weekends and evenings to work on it. I'm using a wonderful birthday present to assist - it's a natural daylight lamp and invaluable for evenings and cloudy days. [Thanks Aiden & Dan!].

In this portrait, I've tried to work more confidently both with colour and contrast. I'm very happy with the result but still see lots of room for improvement.

Today I'm starting on my first commission - another coloured portrait of a beautiful lady. Watch this space! :o)

Karen

Another finished portrait! I've been working on this one of Karen for about a month. It's a present for her birthday and it's the most ambitious image I've drawn so far. I concentrated on getting better contrast and I think it brings the whole thing to life. Karen's hair was quite a challenge too but with the help of my trusty electric eraser, I think I pulled it off [the challenge - not the hair!] :o}

Hope she likes it!

To keep my momentum going, I started on a colour portrait the same day I finished this one. Hopefully I will be able to post the finished item before a month is out. I'll try anyway!

Yay!!! It's finished.....

It's taken a bit of time to finish this one, although probably not as long as it seems due to the fact that I've only had the odd evening to work on it. But I'm very pleased with the final product and have learnt a lot along the way. I think I'd like to sketch Tony now and hang the two pics together.

I'm attaching a few different views of this sketch and am still deciding how I'd like it framed. But most definitely a simple black mat and frame will be the go.

Still going...

I'm still working on this self portrait and have got a little further with it. I think it's coming along ok and I'm learning a lot just having a go.

Self portrait - work in progress

Being as I'm so slow to post finished work here, I thought it would be an idea to post my work as I go along so that you can see how I get to the finished item. Here are the first two photos of a self portrait that I'm working on at the moment. Christmas and New Year have been so busy with the family and house maintenance projects that I've spent very little time on this work. But I'm happy with how it's going. What do you think?