One of the things that I really enjoy doing but have not done that many of are Wedding Portraits. I’ve drawn a few for various friends and family members over the last couple of years, but I tend to shy away from tackling them because they do require a bit more time to accomplish. Not that I don’t enjoy the challenge, I do, it’s just that you need to have the time to set aside to devote solely to the creation of the piece. The challenge comes from capturing the couples likeness, if you fail to do this, the portrait obviously ceases to be a portrait at that point.
Last year I finally decided to give my parents the treatment, having never drawn them before I thought that it was high time that I did so. After having completed that drawing the plan was already set in motion for me to pick up pencil once again and take on the task of doing one for my In-Laws. So this Christmas I found myself doing just that. However, unlike all of the previous drawings that I had done for others in which I had very specific photographic references to follow, I didn’t necessarily have this with my In-Law’s portrait. My wife’s parents didn’t have many photos from their wedding day that I could use to compose the piece, and the ones that they did have were a bit blurry. What I ended up having to do was I had to cannibalize other photos of them from around the same time period, alter their appearance (i.e. hair styles, glasses, their clothing) to match as closely to their look in their wedding photos. When working on portraits I like to work with photos that are as crisp and clean as possible, the more you tend to change and alter photos, the less likely you are to capture their true likeness. So on this piece, I had two mountains to climb: blurry photos and pics I had to alter significantly. Even though I was nervous to begin this portrait, and believe me…my nerves did force me to delay beginning it several times (hell…it was for my In-Laws) the time crunch of having to get the drawing done before Christmas propelled my forward to tackle it and drove me on through til it’s completion. Below is the fruits of my labor.
Below are Close-up photos of the final portrait for you to see the detail, Click on them to Enlarge the images.
So I will admit that it really was down to the wire with this one. I finished the last of the flower and leaf renderings on Christmas Eve and ended up matting and framing the artwork in the early AM the following morning. My wife and I saved the portrait as the last present that they opened on Christmas morning. They seemed pretty surprised when they tore into the gift wrapping and were confronted with the final drawing. I hope they enjoy the piece as much as I did drawing it.
And here is the final portrait framed and matted with a blue matte. Just in case you were wondering, that is me reflected in the glass of the picture frame.
Finally, throughout the process of drawing my In-Laws I took photos of it at various stages of completion. I thought that it’d be fun to show you the process I go through when I drew the piece. So here is a Video Progression of the Portrait from start to finish. Some of the photos of the drawings did not line up perfectly and I promise that if I proceed to do these type of videos in the future, I’ll work on fixing that. Click on the video below and Enjoy!