Watercolor Portrait

Paul Burns · 05-27-2003, 05:56 AM

This is a watercolor portrait of my niece. Keeley was acting as a flower girl in a wedding and outside the church, dropped her basket of flowers. I was lucky enough to have camera in hand and got this wonderful pose in black and white. I used other reference photos for color. The paper used is 300lb Fabriano Uno Soft Press and was an excelent surface for the soft skin. The pigment used was Winsor and Newton. The image size is 13" x 15".

Linda Brandon · 05-27-2003, 10:21 PM

Hi Paul,

This is a charmingly fresh painting. I like how you've chosen this particular moment - does she care that her dress is getting dirty? No!

I'm not a watercolorist, but you also seem to have a good handle on technical issues such as indicating transparent shadows in sunlight and losing the color yellow in the background to indicate atmospheric perspective. Thanks for posting this.

Rochelle Brown · 05-27-2003, 11:16 PM

Watercolor isn't my venue at all. I like to go over and over something probably out of habit. This painting, as Linda said, is really fresh and charming. It is well done for the most part and has a certain luminosity as well.

After looking for a minute I noticed that the feet look very small.