Portrait: Amelia

Last year I painted a couple of pictures of my grandson Ollie - both of which are in my gallery. My daughter, Ollie's mum, asked for the one of me and Ollie before I'd even finished it, and my mother in law asked for the one of Ollie on his own.

That was last summer. I'm going out to Alicante to visit my
Mother in Law next week, and she has made it quite clear she expects a painting of my granddaughter Amelia this time. So on Sunday I picked out the photograph on the right, than sketched out a canvas: - you can see the sketch on the left.
It's a photograph rather than a scan but you can just about see what's what.

The two painting of Ollie last year were rather cheats, because on one he was pretty small, while on the other you could only really see the top of his head and not his facial features at all.

The idea, though, is to stretch myself. I've been painting in acrylics for about a year now, and it's time to really take on a proper portrait.

So I took the sketch along to the Artists' group tonight, and basically just got on with it. SO this is how it stands after two hours' work: -

I could pretend that I'm not very happy with this painting, but it would be an utter lie. Fact is that I'm really pleased.What I will say, though, is that as much as it looks like Amelia, and it pretty much does, it also weirdly looks like her Mum did at the same age.

I have to make a decision, probably tomorrow, as to whether I want to put in a background or not. If I do put in  a background it should probably be of just one colour, maybe a light blue to contrast with the pink dress,