The Portrait of My Son

Here is a collage showing the progression of the painting I did of my son. It is done with the very same oil pastels and techniques that the 6th grade students used. I hope to have images of their portraits posted soon! Looking closely, you can see that this technique is a lot like the old 'paint by numbers' paint sets where you simply filled in the shapes with the correct color. The trick is in deciding which colors (or values) should go in each space. We painted these portraits monochromatically to try to make those decisions on values/colors easier for the students.

The final painting is 16"X20" in oil pastel on gray pastel paper. He would probably like to have it titled "My Avatar", or "Smurf", but I named this painting "My Beautiful Blue Boy". Sorry, son. I know boys don't like to be called "beautiful", but you are beautiful to me.