The Smith Kids

I recently agreed to do a painting from this tiny reference photo.  This is close to the actual size of the digital photo I was given.  They tried very hard to find me a higher-resolution photo, to no avail.

To get a sense of scale, each person’s head in this photo is about 20 x 40 pixels.  In a high-res photo of a person’s face, one eye would be at least this size.  Here’s one of the faces blown up so you can see what I was working with:

And here’s what one eye looks like in a good reference photo.  Reflections in the eyeball.  Wrinkles and pores and individual hairs.

You can see my dilemma.  Normally I would say “no way” to a project like this, but I really wanted to do this painting.  The people in the photo are the 6 siblings of the Smith family, and their family has been close to my own ever since we all met when I was 14.

I had to do this painting.  So I decided to jump in and do the best I could with that photo.  Here’s the result–it took me many hours.

The Smith Kids

20″ x 20″, Acrylic on Canvas

The painting was commissioned by their father as a gift for the oldest daughter (top left) who is one of my most loyal collectors and already owns several of my paintings.

Details of the faces:

I had to set aside my desire to get a perfect likeness of each person.  Instead I worked on getting it close enough so you could tell who’s who, and capturing some essence of each personality.

I’m particularly pleased with the hands: