Double Portrait – The Prep And Taking Photos Of Little Ones

August 23, 2017By adminSTUDIO
Double Portrait – The Prep And Taking Photos Of Little Ones

This is Lilly and Polly, they’re sisters and they are 2 and a half and 11 months old. Their favourite things are their mini-kitchen, their dollies and cuddles.

This double portrait was such joy to make because the girls had such love between them. Also, just using one final reference photo rather than multiple meant the energy and composition seems authentic and ‘real’.

Agreeing on the composition and how your client wants the image to appear is possibly the most important thing to get right when starting a piece. After showing the client some examples, we decided together that we wanted the girls to be embracing and ‘close’ in some way so that formed the basis for our approach to a photographic reference point.

It’s worth looking at art history for the many ways artists have depicted a double portrait (often to tell us a political or social story), such as romantic couples even where there is discord (think this by Hockney,  this by Van Eyck or this by Gainsborough), professional companions where there’s appropriate space between (think this by Holbein) or family members where a distance was portrayed (think this by Portinari, or this by Schadow).

To get my reference imagery for this portrait of sisters, I did a little photoshoot of both of them together for use back in the studio. This was far preferable than the girls sitting for me while I draw because at this age they are so expressive, they’re rather wriggly, and their attention spans are quite slim.

It took the girls a while to get used to the camera. I seem to get a good rapport with kids – but patience and earning their trust is key when on a photoshoot as it can be overwhelming for them. Fortunately, we ended up having lots of smiles and even more great pictures!

So what should you aim for when taking a photograph for an artwork portrait?

My goal for a studio-made double portrait is to select just one photograph to work in which they both feature. I would use the other photos as reference points for the individual detail – for example, to develop the fold of the clothes, the fall of the hair, the eye colour and the exact turn of the cheeky smile. But overwhelmingly, we need one photograph – mainly because the energy between the two subjects just works this way, and the colour reference, lighting and naturalness of the dynamic is obvious.

Another goal for me when taking photos is to have an image which is vibrant and natural, because my artistic style is to express ‘movement’, realness and energy. I won’t want to draw a picture where the subject is rigid and dour, I’d prefer a silly face to get the character of the person over.

Good luck with your double portraits and preceding photoshoots.

Meanwhile stay tuned to see how this double portrait ends up!

Drawing Freddie – The Process

August 14, 2017By adminSTUDIO
Drawing Freddie – The Process

This is little Freddie. He is one and a half and he is ace. His favourite things are tractors, smiling and his Mum.

I often draw portraits of children for my clients (more often than not I don’t publicise them because of privacy reasons). They’re such a joy to draw and paint. Full of character and cheer, their facial features are quite different to humans as they’re still growing. As an artist, it is both a different challenge and a refreshing change.

So how does it differ? Well, artists usually go down the route of life drawing, self-portraits and the like when starting out, all drawing adults. Years spent drawing adults means that you get used to the bone structure, musculature, expressions and mannerisms of adults.

Kids are so different: most obviously, the eyes are proportionally larger than an adult’s. Recently a client confided to me that she had really struggled to find an artist who draws children well. Mainly, she said, due to the eyes not being accurate, to be ‘too adult like and not expressive enough’. Well it is true – unlike an adult, a child’s skull is small and still growing, while babies are born with eyeballs close in size to an adult’s. This makes kids extra-cute of course, but it’s also an artist’s reminder to draw them differently, to think about how the eyesockets and the eyebrows sit. Coupled with the puppy fat that children carry, which creates a more rounded face shape with less definition and structure, the trick to drawing a child’s face is to really ‘look’ at your subject matter.

Of course, some of the art historical greats have drawn adult babies – there are countless examples from art history, including the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Mannerism (think this, this or this ) where babies (more often than not Jesus) was depicted nothing more than a tiny man, with adult proportions and  scrawny – almost wizened – legs, arms and facial features. These paintings do serve a purpose – not least, learning – and laughing – about these were what got us through Art History A’level classes…..

From an art practice point of view, again the trick to drawing anything new, including infant’s heads, and this picture of Freddie, is to ‘look’. It sounds trite, but challenge your perceptions of what you’ve seen and check that the proportions and the shapes that you’ve drawn on paper match what you see in the flesh. Are the eyes rounder, or more almond shape, and are the ears in proportion to the face? Also, think about the structure underneath the face – when you’re drawing a piece of skin over the cheek for example, can you imagine the muscles and the bones underneath, is there the correct shading, however so slight? This was something that Michaelangelo was masterful at, time and again. The increasing technical success of his inordinate amount of work – like yours, mine and all artists -boiled down to just one thing: practice, practice, practice.