Some how the last time I was home I was commissioned (convinced? coerced? tricked?) into doing a portrait of a family friend’s grandkids. KIDS?! PORTRAIT!?

I don’t do portraits.

Portraits are probably the hardest thing someone could ask me to paint.  I think maybe I could paint people ok enough as long as they weren’t supposed to look like anyone in particular, but portraits are supposed to look like someone that the person knows. There’s personality and character that needs to be captured with a portrait and that’s really hard to do. 

I tried though.

Ideally I wanted to do this in color because I had some really cool ideas for backgrounds that could have only been achieved through color. Since I was already WAY out of my comfort zone, I stuck with black and white to make this endeavor a bit more bearable.

The painting sat untouched for a couple weeks as I tried to figure out the right background. Personally, I really liked the piece with the blank background as I’m a big fan of minimalism. But since this was intended as an xmas gift for someone else, I knew I had to do cover the canvass to give it a “complete” look. Not everyone enjoys super minimalism/blank canvass as much as I do.

Finally, one tuesday evening I poured myself a glass (or two) of wine and decided to just put paint on the canvass and let the brush figure out the rest.

 Kids. 2013. Acrylic on Canvass. 16×20