Ruby

This week has been a little difficult as Kea has been really unwell with a stomach bug.  He has been off school all week poor thing feeling rotten.  Luckily in-between looking after him I have had a chance to carrying on painting while he has watched films or slept.

I’ve been concentrating on a portrait I said I would do for someone.  She is called Ruby.  I had to do this portrait from a photo as I don’t actually know Ruby.  I was given a selection of photos to do it from and the one I chose was this one.

I double checked with her mother if there were any of the photos she didn’t like so much or one that she preferred and she assured me that she liked all of them.  I chose this particular pose because I felt out of all the photos this was where she looked the most natural.  I got on with the job.

I finished most of it and decided to send a photo of what I had done so far to Ruby’s mother and sadly I got a response asking if I could paint the arm out.  Sadly it isn’t quite as easy as ‘paint the arm out’ as this would totally change the lighting and shadows etc and it would mean making up half of her face which is never easy to do.  I can understand what she means as I know she would like a clean portrait of her daughter, but then on the other hand I rather like the arm, giving it a much more relaxed feel.  It is more unusual to have a portrait like this but I think it gives it something different, a contemporary felt .  What do you think about it?

I can’t paint out the arm and will give her the painting tonight.  I hear that Ruby likes it with the arm, I just hope her mother won’t be too disappointed.

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