A few years ago, a client asked me to do a portrait of her grandchild. She provided the photograph and wanted a realistic rendering of it. This was fairly straight forward. I did use a grid to draw the portrait on the canvas, and I used digital overlays on the computer to check and adjust my painting to get a likeness.
Then, a few years later, a client asked me to paint a portrait of an old Zambian man that he had photographed years ago in Zambia. This man had walked about 500 km on foot to sort out family matters. This was the only photograph he had of the man. The client wanted me to give my own artistic interpretation to the portrait. Hmmm, this was an adventure waiting to happen!
I looked at some portraits done by artists I admire, for inspiration.
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| Very inspiring portrait of Mandela by Artist Jimmy Law |
I researched some Zambian landscapes on the internet.
I was going to use it in the background.
Then, I started with a loose painting, just to get the feel of it:
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| (Photo is darker than what painting was, I think) |
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