Recently, I painted a big family portrait (all the Creekmores from this branch of the family tree) for my mother. It’s 40 inches wide and 30 inches tall and it looks like this:
My mother asked me to create a family portrait years ago, but I didn’t know how to go about it until I was flipping through a book of paintings by James Tissot. Tissot was a French/English (English/French?) artist back in the 19th century and he created a lot of paintings featuring fancy folk in fancy clothes, so I decided to do the same thing.
It starts with a bunch of sketches, loose sketches. And when I use the word “sketch”, I don’t mean “a basically finished drawing that’ll look good when I post it on Instagrams”, I mean “a really rough blocky drawing that I’m embarrassed to show anybody because maybe you’ll think I’m just bad at drawing”. Here’s what I’m talking about:
After I’ve settled on a layout, I sketch out the people. Because it’s a portrait, it’s important that the people in the painting look like the actual people they’re meant to represent. Me, I’m a caricaturist. Even when I attempt to draw a straight up likeness I end up with a caricature, so I just lean into it and make caricatures from the start. But I’m not a mean-spirited caricaturist, especially when I’m painting family members. Here are some of the pencil drawings, drawings wherein I am mainly concerned with approximating a likeness:
When I’ve tightened up all the pencils, I ink over them with a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen.
Next, I scan them all in and arrange them in Photoshop.
Then I print out the whole thing one piece at a time and fit it back together like a puzzle.
The next step is probably my least favorite part of the process. Once I’ve taped it all together into one big piece, I flip it over and trace the lines on the reverse side using a dark pencil, a 4B or a 6B. Then I lay that sheet down onto the piece of watercolor paper I’ll use for the final painting with the dark pencil lines touching the surface of the watercolor paper. Then I tape the pages together and rub the lines from one sheet onto the other. When I lift it up, the lines have been transferred onto the watercolor paper. Then I clean up the lines, basically re-drawing everything for a third time, before inking them with a brush and black india ink. At this point, the whole thing has been taped to a large piece of board from Lowe’s so that I can move it easily from place to place. (I have children, small children, and it is important to keep paintings out of their reach. We paint together sometimes, me and the kids, and I don’t want them thinking that they’re as free to paint on this one as they are on our more collaborative projects)
I go into Photoshop again to choose a color palette and I print off the image on a little piece of paper to use as a guide while I start doing the actual painting.
Now, the painting begins. Watercolor is my preferred medium and that’s what I used for this piece. I started with the background and then I just went from left to right.
Here are some details from the final image:
Want to see some other portraits I’ve done..? Here’s one I did as a wedding gift for my brother-in-law and his wife:
…look:
See? Instead of a nike swoosh, I drew in the goddess nike. Pretty clever, right?
Here’s one I did for my other brother-in-law and his wife:
Hmmm… that’s a photograph of a painting and you maybe can’t see it as well as I’d hoped. I don’t have a scan of it to share, but, if you know him and/or his wife and you’re lucky enough to be invited over to their place, you can see it hanging up on their wall. Here’s how it looked before I started painting it:
Finally, a couple more couply portraits:
Cheers.
Amazing work!!! Always an inspiration.
I’m glad you’ve seen it! I meant to send you progress photos.
Excellent! From someone who can barely draw a stick figure, those turned out beautiful.
I really like the dog added to the family picture.
Riley the dog, a special beast with a special place in Creekmore lore.
Could not believe the fantastic surprise visit you paid us on Saturday. You not only painted but also delivered and hung this absolute masterpiece over our fireplace mantel!! And all I really expected was a pen and ink sketch because I know you are so busy with family, work and often as a Bible class teacher. You continue to be my favorite son. Your dad and I are so proud of you and love you so dearly!
Thanks again!
Thanks for being patient! I’m glad I finally got it done.
Wow! I mean, just wow!