I’ve been working on this portrait of my feisty great-niece for ages. The original is a fab photo by Jeremy Wheeler of Agea Studio, and I struggled with the hand and arm, because they’re slightly blurred and I kept wanting to “correct” the image, but that just made it look weirder. Here are the stages of the painting, from the initial sketch. The underpainting went through some really strange transformations! I used Liquitex Heavy Body acrylic paints onto stretched canvas.
Here’s a short time-lapse film that Husb made of the painting, from scratch. I used a recycled canvas that I had been doing some hard-edge experiments on. At times, I worked with the photo and canvas upside down as I find it easier to get the details right that way. See if you can spot Sparta Puss – she likes to keep me company while I paint.
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