Ado and a Don't

Well, without much ado, this is the portrait from the other day. When -- and I think that it looks enough like her that I can use her name -- Erin (not our daughter) left, she had only posed for maybe an hour. At that point, the painting was in such sad shape that I didn't even let Erin see it. As mentioned before, I literally had a dream about painting Erin. In order to facilitate her posing for me, I suggested that she bring her 14 month old son here for his afternoon nap.

There are very few items that we still have from when our children were babies; the Fisher Price little people which get played with all the time, the Graco Pack N Play, and the baby monitor. Before Erin arrived, I set up the pack n play and the baby monitor so that the baby could sleep, and we could hear him when he woke.

We went to the studio with the baby still crying in the pack n play. The idea was to at least get the skin tones mixed, and hopefully, the baby would fall asleep, and I could paint. Sure enough, that's what happened, but long before I was ready to quit, the baby woke up.



In real life, this Erin's facial expressions are always changing and she seems endlessly excited about everything. Because it's such a natural expression for her, I should have agreed to let her smile for the portrait. In total and complete ignorance, I thought that a smile would be a difficult pose to keep, so I encouraged a rather plain expression. She could have smiled not for an hour, but for the whole afternoon! She's absolutely delightful.

Next time, I'll know better. Whatever the sitter wants to do to be comfortable posing, let them do it and be it, and don't presume that I know what's best for the sitter.

It's a 12" x 16" oil on linen.