My Kids

[Chris Saper]

Dear Vianna,

Your daughter is the Girl with the Pearl. Lovely angle, lighting, excellent resource. I also like the picture of your son. Nonetheless, the lighting is superior on your daughter, and I think that's what you should seek with your son so that they are compatible.

The things that I think count most in painting a pair of portraits are:

canvas size
head size
light color and quality
background continuity
and as John mentions, a relationship, direction wise.

So deductively, that leaves you with working with your son's image. Here are some thoughts:

If you are working in photoshop ( I have CS, don't know much about the other versions,) you can adjust color temp through Image, Adjust, Photo filter. I don't know if that will be enough to equalize the color temp, you'd have to try it to see.

Directionally speaking, you could flip one of the images to have the kids face each other. However, the light directions will be opposing. You will have to decide if that works for you or not.

Or you could work both paintings simultaneously, using a color photo image of your daughter , and a high res B/W of your son. Make the color quality and harmony in his painting agree with hers.

Of course, you can always take more pics of your son Set him up with the light and direction opposite to your daughter. It might be a good time to experiment with different white balance points in your camera. (Or Diane can come by with her fancy camera, and you can work on the lighting together.)

Good luck. I know these will be excellent paintings.

[Michele Rushworth]

Allan Rahbeck wrote:

Do you have a spot metering in the camera? Be sure to measure at the light parts of the face.

That's exactly what I was thinking. It seems as if either spot metering or "center weighted metering" was in effect and the camera metered off a different part of the image in each shot. There's no way to recover enough information in the blown out highlights in the left areas of his face. You'll need to reshoot.

[Vianna Szabo]

Thank you everyone for the wonderful feed back. I think of this site as portrait university, but P.U. doesn't sound so good. I took more photos of my son yesterday and am happier with the results, however, after reading all the great advice I think I will photograph him again in front of a different window, posing in another direction and use the spot meter. Luckily he is very easy going. Painting your own children is an interesting challenge. The mother in me is looking for those expressions of their personalities that I cherish and makes me overlook artistic flaws in the reference material. I suppose I am my own worst client. Thanks for the compliment, Jimmy, I do have "great looking" kids.

Vianna

[Mike McCarty]

Vianna,

That looks much better. Since you are thinking about making a matched pair I would vote for changing your sons jacket, which in contrast to your daughter seems really casual. I think I would go with a collared shirt and sport coat. The suggestion about opposing views is also a good one.

It may be personal preference but I would like to see your daughters head go a little more toward the vertical.

[Vianna Szabo]

Well I had to wait a few days for the gray skies to return. I changed his position and attempted to meter the light. I am much happier with this pose but I think the light shape of the arm coming forward is awkward. I kept him in the same coat because he loves it. A clean tee shirt is as dressed up as he will get. I was able to remove the earphones which he had surgically attached to his head. Do you think 20"x24" is too large a canvas for these? Let me know what you think.

Vianna

[Michele Rushworth]

Nice light, nice pose (don't even mind the coat so much) but the color balance seems off. Did you set your white balance to shade or cloudy?

[Vianna Szabo]

I'm glad you like the pose, Michele. I set the white balance to shady but the color is still much warmer than my daughters photo. Hopefully I can work from the photo and life to get the color correction I need.

Vianna