Thursday, October 27, 2011

A couple of kids

Here's a couple of 6x8 portrait sketches of a friend's kids, Leo and Layla. I tried this more as an experiment than anything else to see if I could infuse some life in a portrait using just photos as reference. It's not something I found easy at all, and I'm not sure about the results which I feel look overlaboured.. but here they are anyway!

13 comments:

Susan Roux said...

I prefer your painting of Leo. It's gotta be difficult to paint a face on such a small format. It doesn't allow room for much painterly strokes. Very nice. I'm sure your friend will love them!

Michael Pieczonka said...

Thanks for the honest crit Susan. I was feeling better about the one of Leo than the one of Layla. Making drawing corrections took up the bulk of the time here. I may have to rework the second one a bit!

jesusest@gmail.com said...

Congratulation Michael, I think both of them look very cute, I also think that is a great manner to learn about doing portraits, you can do 2 or 3 a week, is a lot of fun. Any way I like both of them, keep it up

Rolina said...

They are lovely kids and you have caught them beautifully - I particularly love Layla's expression!

ddd said...

Looking great Michael! It is difficult to inpart freshness of life in to painting from a photo. I think you did a very good job at both of them but for me you nailed it with the painting of Layla!

Michael Pieczonka said...

Thanks Jesus, portraits are fun.. but also a little aggravating getting the likeness right to tell ya the truth!

Thannks Rolina!

Michael Pieczonka said...

Thanks a lot Dalibor. Yeah, true what you say about photos. The real trick I think is just ignoring the colour and using them for B&W value, but that's easier said than done IMO.

Marco Bucci said...

I think you did a great job here man, especially on the boy. The girl seems to have a few hard edges on her which (imo) age her a bit. Great colour though - they definitely have a life that is outside of the realm of photography.

Michael Pieczonka said...

Thanks much Marco! I agree with ya about the edges on the girl's port, somehow I made her look a couple of years older than her real age (5). I though it was the proportions, but maybe softening the edges will help too?!

Altax said...

Lovely paintings and awesome pictures.

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Willy Ashworth said...

Mike:

I like these a lot, and I'm not sure I could call them over painted. You have definitely captured something here for sure. Really nice.

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fongie said...

Wow, the one of Layla is beautiful Mike. I am sure the portrait is even better to admire in person.