Soldier Portrait & Equine Bling-Bling

I have finally completed my most recent portrait commission, and am currently working on two other paintings.



The first is SFC Adams. This soldier portrait is of a man who was killed in action in Iraq, leaving behind his three children, his wife, and his mother. The original photo had the soldier leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands together, almost in an attitude of prayer. I received the photo with the soldier's hands partially cut off. I asked my client if I could turn the portrait into a landscape view so I could see all of his hands. In addition, my client wanted to have a flag behind him. So, this is what I came up with.

So far I have only been working on the background, which is not nearly finished. I haven't even begun the stars yet. This will take awhile, and because it is on paper and we are entering into the hot and humid season, it may not be done for several months. Because of this, updates may not be very often.

This portrait is being done on sand colored Colourfix paper, 11" x 14" in size, and using only Prismas (with bristle & stencil brushes for blending). This photo is appearantly not quite as good as I thought it was. I'll get a better photo for my next update.

For more information on Soldier Portraits, a non-profit organization made up of artists who paint portraits of fallen soldiers for free, please see Fallen Heroes.




The second one is a fun piece!! I have been wanting to paint a picture of a very detailed and decorative horse bit and bridle, but have had a great deal of trouble finding just the right ref photo. Whenever there is a rated horse show around here, I either can not get close enough to the horse, the lighting is too poor, or the horse will not stand still long enough for me to get a good photo. So I went to WetCanvas' Image Library and found a very nice photo that I could use.

This is on gray Pastelbord, and is 8" x 10" in size. I used a watercolor pencil wash for the background, with Prismas over the top. The rest of the painting I am using only Prismas with bristle and stencil brushes to blend.

The background is just about done (although in this photo it looks a bit blotchy. In real life it is nice and smoothly blended together), but nothing else is even near completion.

I have been working on this quite a bit today and should have an update tomorrow.