Recapturing the 70's/The Wager

"Pamela & John"

I was recently commissioned by a young woman to do a restorative painting of her parents from the above photograph. It was to be a gift for her mother. It was quite difficult for several reason, one being the obvious damage to the picture and the other being it's overall fuzziness, especially when zoomed in - too bad they didn't have high resolution photography in the late 70's.' Essential facial features and details were unclear. I asked her to send me other photographs of them from around the same time to assist in rendering them. This helped out quite a bit.

I'm never bound to the photograph when doing works like this - elements can be moved around/removed, composition can be altered. All that matters is capturing the likeness, the soul of the people in frame and honoring the moment.

This portrait was created digitally using a Wacom tablet, CS3 and Coral Painter 11, and printed out on Canon Pixma 8 Color Pro9000 Mark II Printer on Hahnemunle Fine Art PhotoRag.

a photo of the print

The final print was asked to be 8x8" for framing. It looked quite good and the client was very happy. She said I "nailed" them, from her mother's expression to her father's subtle smirk. I heard later that when she gave it to her mother, she cried. What an amazing compliment! This one was a real pleasure to do, even if that flannel shirt drove me a bit nuts.

Photo detail of print

I'm currently doing 5 other portraits, and have gotten many inquires about commissions. If you are interested, please check out my in-progress website, COBBLE HILL PORTRAITS and contact me there.

BUT...

before you do, please realize that custom portraiture is expensive. Most take at least 2 full days + to do, so extrapolate that out for the start of a fair price ($$). Be honest with your budget before you do. Thanks for stopping by.