Joe and Eileen - a surprise gift
The brief
This commission was a beautiful idea by my client Kath, as a gift for her husband: a posthumous portrait of his parents.
She provided a selection of furtively retrieved old family photos to work with, as it was to be a surprise reveal on his birthday. As soon as I saw these two holiday snaps from the 1960s, I lost interest in all the other options, hopefully you can see why!
The plan
Kath was enthusiastic about the proposed layout, and as a very creative person herself she could visualise it despite the roughness of my photo collage, and the early painting stages (see below).
Luckily both reference photos were taken from a fairly similar angle (It looks like Eileen’s photographer was taller than Joe’s… I guess they took it in turns to photograph each other… and Kath suggested they may have been sharing one hat!). Anyway, the lighting and angles were very similar, so it was relatively easy to combine them. It can be very challenging to combine photos convincingly.
Early stages
Because of the photo cropping, I had to infer a few elements. Kath suggested a Breton top was more Eileen’s style. I laid a scaled drawing onto the canvas for approval. The plan was to have a rough bare gesso (white) edge, as in this old portrait of my daughter Izzi - suggestive of the torn edge of a photo. The transfer drawing formed an accidental heart, which Kath elected to retain, knowing we could change it later.
The reveal
On Malcolm’s birthday Kath brought him here for what he thought was a studio tour (tee hee!). He’d seen me on Portrait Artist Of The Year, so I shared some paraphernalia, and stories about the show. Finally we revealed the real reason for the visit. As ever, I volunteered that the joy of oil painting is that it can be changed, so invited him to mull over it, and let me know any amendments he’d like.
I always welcome any minor adjustments at the end - the smallest detail can affect a likeness. We agreed it was better to drop the heart shape, extending the image out to the sides. Kath helpfully provided a couple more photos showing what strong arms Joe had. Also another photo to illustrate that Joe was perhaps a little less heavy-set in the chin than he seemed in the main reference photo. Finally, a request to knock back the pink of the deckchairs, and they were very happy:
“Joe & Eileen” - 40x40cm oil on canvas board.
Although I mainly work from life, splicing together photos is a really interesting challenge. It was a privilege to be able to assemble reference and imagination into a sort of inferred memory.
Contact me for more information on commissions - whether you’d like to model in my studio, have a landscape painted on location, or some elaborate scheme, I’m always interested to discuss without obligation.