Hello everyone,
I am posting this reference photo here because I would like some help with planning this portrait. I didn't post this under reference photos because I am happy with the light. I have taken probably 200 photos of my two children and this is the best pose and lighting situation. (Enough photos so that my husband said I'm "cutting into their summer" and I've promised to start paying them!) Now the next step is to actually dress these two in something that will work. And, of course, move over my backdrop so it covers the background.
It is actually a grey backdrop, it looks more green on the monitor. The chair is green, which I don't care for, maybe I could buy some fabric is the correct color and repaint the chair fabric a better color. Or maybe it'll just stay green.
My biggest challenge here is what to put my kids in. We are a pretty casual family and my daughter is only 14 so I want to keep this casual. T(No gowns.) Technically, I think they both need long pants so I don't end up cropping this photo in the middle of a bare let.
Specifically, here are a couple of questions:
1. Would white shirts be okay? The white shirts would be close to their faces so all the light massing would be in the center of the painting.
2. Any other help with color combinations, including that chair and the backdrop would be helpful. Or even help on how to go about figuring this out
. I started out taking photos of the kids in outfits I wanted to paint, but after many 'photo shoots' I decided I needed to grab them as they were and just try out different locations. I did that instead of taking 20 shots in a pose/location that didn't work and then moving onto the next one. So, now that I have my pose and location I need to put them in some kind of outfits.
I am feeling a little bit like this portrait may be too much for me to attempt, but I really would like to have a portrait of both of our children together. I'm going to give it a try anyway. Painting two people doesn't just double the challenges, it's exponentially more difficult!
Thank you in advance,
Joan
P.S. I don't have Photoshop, you can see some crude attempts at making my son's pants longer and erasing some background noise.