Stage 1 - An Oil Portrait of Two Children.

Portrait: Stage 1 in a new direction.

It doesn't matter how you start a painting, it only matters that you start. Starting was once a problem for me, this is common for many people, but it's not a problem for me anymore. I'm long past that stage. Now, it seems, my problem is stopping starting.

I started a picture two or so years ago that I have only just stopped starting. It began in one way, as a completely different thing, two individual studies, and made out of plastic. Then I settled on a different idea, that both boys (the subjects of the picture) should be at play and in the one image, a single picture, not two. I began this as a pastel on cardboard, then as a pencil study on canvas. Finally as a very detailed oil painting on canvas. 

I'm long past stage one, but the image you see above is different from any I've drawn before, I've never started a portrait like this. Why would I? Why is it so mechanical? That will become clear later.

You can draw from life and work an image up, you can imagine it and draw free-hand onto the page, or paint it straight on the canvas. In the design above I found a new reason for painting this picture. Most pictures that are portraits are of interest only to the family of the people they aim to depict. In this case I want this picture to be the kind of thing anyone might want to hang on their wall. The objective is not to paint two children but paint something we all understand and share in childhood.

A sketch in pencil.

It's very hard to step out of your work and see it as others do. But I think it shows when you are not in the work in the way you should be. You must never lose yourself to the picture, your personality has to be in there, your take on the subject or the world. Why should a children's portrait be any different?...it shouldn't. Why should it be boring or meaningless to anyone outside the family? It shouldn't.

Pastel Test over Two pieces of Card  - with visible 'pentimento' and enlargement grid.

Your imagination should be as active there too. I've worked for months on pictures that have resulted in nothing but a big bloody bore. That's because I tried to meet a need that someone else had.

Not this time. I'm not sure if what I have planned will work or even how this painting will be received. But I doubt it will look quite like any portrait I've seen before. FYI - At least one small part of it will be painted with wine....how else could I justify showing the process here?

Toybox Colour Plan.

With the Toybox sketch above I was not concerned about likeness, it's just a rough, to test an idea that perhaps a realistic image with child-like colouring could work. It would, but it's not the direction I've finally, finally ....finally chosen. 

There will be more on this as the picture is completed.

S K Moore