One of my nieces and her husband asked me to paint portraits of their two children. Being a big chicken, I procrastinated for quite awhile. Finally I dived in. Here is the final of their daughter Ceci. Here are some some of the steps along the way, if you’re interested.
While I was thinking ‘figurative’ and ‘photo’ for Emily’s painting, I decided to take a stab at a water fountain/statue in the courtyard at Sibley Physicians Building. I take pix of him every time I have an appointment there.
I love the angular chunks of the composition and was debating long and hard whether to add more detail after I did my first fast rough-in. Mistake! I wish I’d left it as is. One of these days I’ll scrub some paint over it lightly and try to return it to a more primitive state. It’s way too detailed and dark for my taste at the moment. 
My sister Ceci sent me a darling photo of her daughter Emily, dressed in a black and white motif with a pop of yellow. I had to paint it, of course, trying my best to avoid the pitfalls of painting from photos rather than life. Here it is. And of course I presented it to my sis. 
I had the privilege of hanging around NIH with a dear cousin while he had a consult or two. While waiting in the lobby one day, I saw this darling girl in her summer frock, talking on the phone with her mother nearby. I couldn’t resist taking a covert photo and then painting her up with Art Rage on my iPad as soon as I got home. So sweet. Took me back to my own girlhood and crisp cotton dresses. You don’t see scenes like this every day.
Girl on phone
While in Maine, Ceci and I stayed in an aging (i.e., inexpensive) resort hotel which had a beautiful waterfront view. Another delight (for me, anyway — Ceci thought I was a bit nuts) was a cute little rubber ducky. I couldn’t resist positioning him here, there, and everywhere around the room for a series of silly photos. Later at home, I memorialized him again by painting him in gouache and on the iPad. Here are the paintings, followed by some photos:
I’m nuts!
love that fish pose!
Selected poses.
I had made good progress during my work based on the reference photograph, but I decided it wasn’t good enough. As a way to visualize changes that might improve the painting, I decided to do a mark-up on the iPad, using a side-by-side comparison with the reference photo.
markup of painted portrait, as a result of side-by-side comparison with photo. iPad screenshot.
I cropped the photo included in my September 8th post and imported it digitally into the ArtRage app on my iPad. I then ‘painted’ over the portrait area, trying to remedy the problems I identified in the painting. This was a freehand process, done by ‘eyeballing’ the photo reference. ArtRage is not able to make measurements for a closer comparison of the two images.
I like this markup as well as the final painting — if not more! The ability to easily edit iPad marks liberates me from feeling that each (potentially incorrect) modification is ‘permanent’. Playing around with the marks often yields spontaneous and interesting ideas that I would never have attempted initially in oils.
Even though I liked the resulting mark-up, I knew it would still be a challenge to implement these ideas in oil paint on the actual painting.
A few days after my third meeting with Rita, I decided to spend some time at home, making corrections based on the photo I’d taken at the prior session. Then I blew up a print of the photo, marked up the dimensions of key facial features and then taped it beside my updated portrait for a closer comparison.
A quick look confirms that the portrait is better than it had been, but . . . the chin is too long. The lower cheeks and forehead are too narrow. The nose isn’t quite right and the eye on our left droops too much. The hair is too high (but I love it so! Will I bite the bullet and whittle it down?)
session five, after implementing changes identified via my iPad analysis
I show it to Rita who likes it ‘as is’ and doesn’t want me to make more changes. Hmmmm. What to do?
Take It From the Top, one of our beautiful barriers. original iPad painting.
This iPad sketch is based on a satellite image of one of the islands offshore of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I think it’s Deer Island, but don’t remember for sure. Can anyone identify this for me?
The next time Rita and I got together, I focused primarily on developing her eyes and trying to capture the slight grin we’d arrived at for the facial expression. Didn’t want to touch the hair or general coloration, which I liked.
Rita at session 3.
At the end of the session, I made a photo or two of Rita in this position and with ‘the grin’. You can see immediately that I’ve got a ways to go!
Rita, in the selected pose.
Jackson Avenue cedar. original iPad painting.
Of course we have to include Ocean Springs, when we’re talking Biloxi. And here’s a beauty right near the beach on Jackson Avenue. Thanks to my sister Susan for encouraging me to capture it in my iPad series.