Dear Michael,

What a beautiful painting! and such sensitive work on the fabric/shadows falling on fabric. (I'm looking at the shadow of the thumb as I write this.) And what a nice feeling between the two girls. This is really splendid work, Michael.

Linda

Linda:

Thanks for your kind words. Aren't you going to be in Bill Whitaker's class in April too? If so, then it will be terrific to meet you and spend a week together learning. That class is going to be a great experience. :)

The family should commission you to do two individual portraits, one for each girl. This one gets bequeathed to a museum!

Michael,

Beautiful portrait. I love the way the dresses are painted. I've been anticipating the final painting since seeing the wonderful preliminary drawing.

Steve

Michele: From your mouth to God's ears.

Steve: Thanks for your emails and suggestions for ASL in Denver, it was good to talk to you and thanks for your compliments here too. :)

Michael,

I continue to come back to this painting again and again.

One of the things that intrigues me is how you dealt with reflected color. Although the girls' dresses were blue, I know that you were, at least in the underpainting, engaging in a "black/white" monochromatic foundation.

Did you abandon the existing color resource? Did you incorporate some aspect of it? In your finished piece I see no color disharmony at all. How did you arrive at the color expression in your finished painting?

Michael, I see the influence of William Whitaker on your work. This piece has the smooth coolness that I like so much in his paintings.

Chris: Well, bless you for coming back again. :)

I really did struggle with this portrait, and changing so much color in the piece worried me for a long while into the process.

In the end it was the values that made the difference. Because I was working in monochrome in the underpainting, I had a value scale for the dresses. I made a nine value scale with the blue colors as I saw them in the dresses. I then did the same with three hue variations of yellow comparing each value with the corresponding value in the blue to capture a similar "intensity" or chroma between the yellow and the blue. I selected one that worked the best and went with it. I also specifically looked for areas where the blue was playing into the flesh tones and warmed them up instead.

Another thing that gave me some challenges was that in my original reference, the girls are not together. I had to put them together and get relative sizes as Peyton is two years younger than her sister and their sizes in the reference were the same. I also had to figure out shadow interplay between the girls as they needed to look like there were right there together. It was tricky.

Chase and Peyton
 

It's a beautiful painting Michael. The way you've described the color scheme in the room allows me to "see" it installed. It must be breathtaking.

Jean

Jean:

Well, it hasn't been installed yet. I just got a frame for it yesterday and am taking it to a 4-day show that starts tomorrow. It will be the centerpiece of my display and will likely be the first place the client sees the final. I will deliver it after the show.

That is one of the problems of being a portrait artist -- all your work goes home with someone and you are left with nothing to display at shows! So I took advantage of the opportunity of having finished the painting so close to this show to have it and display it before waving it bye bye. :)