Nose to nose, watercolor by Linda Young

Nose to nose

Copyright Linda Young

9" x 12" Watercolor 

Little girl meets little dog on an up close and personal way:  nose to nose.  The painting was part of a portrait project I have just completed.  The little girl is my great niece Allie and the dog is Hannah, our Westie Rescue.  This will go to someone special for a belated birthday present:  it will go to her Daddy.  

Linda Young Watercolors

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Our Little Guy - Finished by Jennifer VonStein

Our Little Guy - 12 x 16

Acrylic on paper

Well, this study showed me I have to do a LOT more figurative work soon! This is a little too tight and tentative for me, but I think it captures my foster son's sweet, curious, happy expression. While at a demo today, I worked on another version, but this time I painted alla prima on canvas, and instead of a photo reference from my iPod, I used this painting. I'll post version 2 when I get home and I can take a better photo.

Our Little Guy - Work In Progress by Jennifer VonStein

Our Little Guy - Stage 1 - Acrylic on Paper

Some of you may know, but I was not posting recently because I took a maternity leave. My hubby and I were blessed with the opportunity to foster (and hopefully adopt) this little guy, RX. I am currently at a convention in NYC, and instead of painting an abstract landscape like I normally do at a show, I decided to paint a portrait of our little guy for a Valentine's present for my husband. You get to see it before he does!

The lighting in the show is HORRIBLE, and I took this with my cell phone, but I always love to see works in progress, so why not! So far, I have been establishing the undertones and working on his eyes. (Yes, they really are that huge and he has the most incredible lashes! )Later I will smooth out his skin with some wet-in-wet blending, refine values and pump up color a bit. I used to focus on fihurative work, but it has been years since I have painted children.

"Finished" Child portrait in watercolor by artist Linda Young

Meet Roman

 a Watercolor portrait 8-1/4" x 10-1/8" by Linda Young

This is the finished portrait of Roman, a grandchild of a client of mine who will be giving this as a present this Christmas to her son and daughter-in law.  When I was painting him I saw the youthful innocence and yet the intense curiosity in his beautiful gray blue eyes really stood out and made impression on me.  Considering I only had a 4 x 6 photograph to go by and then enlarged some via scanning, his eyes were so important to me to paint as correctly as I possibly could.  His gaze was capitvating. 

I originally painted the background a light cobalt blue, then medium blue to build up the color; but his eye's and hair got "lost" and didn't stand out; in fact it was quite boring!  I slept on it overnight and this morning when I awoke to the painting by my bed, I saw it with a fresh eye.  It was apparent to me what was needed:  depth and texture.  The colors in the background I chose were combinations of (or straight) mixes of cobalt, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, sap green and quinacridone red.  There are many layers of glazing in the background and most of it was done wet into wet.

I'm happy with the way Roman turned out.  I hope you have liked the steps to creating this painting from start to finish.  I feel like I know Roman personally without ever having met this little man.  Maybe one day, I'll get to meet him face to face.

Linda Young Watercolors website