My lovely daughters.

I`ve done two Portraits in the last couple of weeks.

The first one was of Stephanie. The reference photo that I used was one I`d taken last year, when she was all dressed up to go to a friends wedding.

At the time she was wearing braces on her teeth, but I used my artistic licence to remove them. ( She has since had them removed in real life too).

Stephanie, aged 14.

This is painted on 15x11" Arches rough watercolour paper. Using a mix of M. Grahams watercolours, and Daler and Rowney watercolours. 

I was quite pleased with how it turned out.This photo doesn`t do the painting justice,which I find quite alot of the time, especially in winter, when the lighting isn`t very good.

I really must improve my photography skills.

Anyway, moving on, the following photo is the portrait that I painted of Danielle, my youngest daughter.  She was about 7 or 8 years old at the time the photo reference was taken.

She was totally engrossed with something that was on the TV, hence the glazed over look on her face....lol.

I started painting this at art group last night, then finished it at home this afternoon.......and I had a real struggle with it.

I just seemed to be fighting the paint the whole time. Nothing I did seemed to go right. Since the photo was taken I`ve softened the jawline, which looks a bit better, again this photo could be alot better.

I think I`ll do another painting of Danielle, but next time I`ll use a different reference image, because I think she looks a little sad on this..

Here is how it looked after last nights session..

You can also see the reference that I worked from.