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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Baby Girl Pastel Portrait Commission



After painting lots of pets I had the wonderful opportunity to paint a lovely baby girl....my client's 20 month old granddaughter.

In this digital age, I've never met the sweet baby, but had her photo e-mailed to me as a jpeg attachment in a high resolution to my in-box.




I was taken at how beautiful she was...and how fair!  The dark desk behind her really brought out how light her skin was, and brought your attention to her face.

First I cropped the photo in photoshop.




I was concerned about the hand under her lace, but later thought it was a sweet baby gesture and left it in.

I wanted to see the values better, so I put it in photoshop elements and broke the photo into 5 values.




I now thought the dark background was too harsh and decided to keep the painting high key...as this child is so light-filled.  I would keep everything soft and chose a light beige sanded paper (U-Art) that would go with her light warm complexion.  

Here is the result!



I really am happy with the way this came out.  The photo didn't capture the colors exactly, but close enough to give you an idea of what I was going for .

Baby portraits are very sensitive...they have such soft, smooth skin...no wrinkles!  And a glow that I think pastel captures wonderfully!

Hope you enjoyed my process.  Thank you for following my blog.

For information about a portrait or classes, please see my website here.

Kim Werfel

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