We just passed the inspirational and iconic holidays of Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, and unfortunately, I found myself unable to celebrate with either parent on their specific day. Not wanting to be a bad son, I had to make it up to them somehow.
And what better way to butter someone up then to paint a portrait of them?
To start, I chose one of my favorite pictures of my mom and me. I then sketched it out a few times, but I kept getting the proportions wrong. Super unforgiving to try to render a face so familiar! Eventually I took a page out of Norman Rockwell’s book and did a light tracing to nail down the proportions, then worked from reference. The result was quite good and I’m very happy with how it came out. Especially the colors – which I totally owned myself.
Next was a painting of me and my dad. Following a similar strategy as the previous painting, this one didn’t take nearly as long. I also directly sampled a lot of my color from the image, so this one came out a bit more muted and grounded.
Contrasting the two, I like how I did the color a bit more in the first one, but overall I’m quite satisfied with how they both came out!
I then had them printed onto canvas and shipped to my parents. They came out great and they were totally stoked. Mission: successful!
Bonus: A song about yer Pop and a song about yer Mum.