Sweetness of Summer

Sweetness of  Summer

What a fun and enjoyable project.   Painting children as I've said many times before can be challenging.  It's a fine line between the soft and sweet expression and achieving an adequate likeness.  Tots have neither wrinkles or angular features, like adults and painters use these as convenient facial landmarks.   Tots have faces with airbrushed angelic-like perfection.    So the painting process of them may involve painting, wiping out, and repeating - until the soft likeness is achieved.

A good reference photo can make a positive difference when creating a painted portrait, and this was a good one.   The challenges in this project, besides the likeness, were 1) transforming the greenish-yellow tones in the photo into a more summery color scheme, (making it lighter and brighter), and secondly, realigning the rectangular photo onto a square format while maintaining the balance of the landscape, parasol and figure.

Warm summer sunlight on young, healthy figures in back-lighting often have a bright red glow, especially in the ears, hands and feet.   I intentionally pumped up the warm flesh color to contrast with the nice summery blue - its complement. The toddler's shadow is stretched to the right bottom corner, balanced by the shoreline entering from the left, leading to the figure. The loop of the parasol handle is a good compositional element for leading the viewer's eye back up to the sweet smiling face.

This painting will hopefully turn a simple summer-day photo into a permanent family heirloom.