In the Spotlight

[Michele Rushworth]

With such a lovely granddaughter to work with I would also highly recommend that you take some well planned photographs of her, to start with. Read the various photography threads before posing her, especially the threads on lighting. Then the next step might be to post the reference photos for critique before starting to paint.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Dianne, I have started a thread on backgrounds:

http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...4830#post64830

Hope it answers some of your questions. It will be interesting to see what others have to say on the subject.

[Dianne Gardner]

Alexandra,
I am planning to have this granddaughter and her sister come and pose for me in their costumes really soon. I will be doing as much studying as I can from the photography section of this forum. There is so much information here that its almost overwhelming but I hope I can glean enough to begin with to take some decent photographs. I have an older digital camera. I think they also are planning on doing a live sitting for me for at least a couple of hours. Jade sits really well and I used her in another open studio painting that I did. I can at least do some live studies to work from even if they don't sit long.

Michelle, I will post the reference photos to be critiqued. Thank you for that suggestion. I'm looking forward to this!

Alexandra, thank you for starting that thread. I will join you over there. I too am interested in the responses!

I am still going to take Ilaria's suggestion and finish this painting. I think I can make it work.

Thank you!

Dianne