Painting 94, love my students

My students are so generous, my friend and student, Pat went to Cheap Joe's in the Carolina's and found that wonderful textured clayboard I've been looking for, and gifted one to me, so I decided to do another painting of an old photo, out of my Grandmother's photo album,on it. I think these women are related to me somehow, possible great great aunts or grandmothers or cousins, who knows now, my grandmother's been gone since 1965. I really like this photo, there were actually 4 women in it but I just used 2, I think getting 2 people on this 6" x 6" board was doing pretty good. I really enjoyed this painting today. The regular clayboard is slick, and the textured clayboard paints similarly to watercolor paper, so it's very comfortable to paint on.

I started by drawing the porch and steps with the women in place, I probably could have just jumped in and started painting, but this way I didn't have to make any adjustments. I started with the heads and then put in the clothing in the shapes of the coats, then the hair, which was kind of lost in the background, this picture was probably taken around 1910 or so, which is black and white, I blew it up but it's a bit grainy and not very detailed. I liked having to figure out what colors the clothes were, and the hair, and so on, lots of fun, it's almost like dressing dolls, which I really enjoyed as a child. The house in the background looked so dark, that I assumed that it was a brown house. I had a bit of trouble with the faces, at first I got the correct ages, then as I worked and lightened the flesh, they seemed to melt away the age, that's the one on the left, and the one on the right was just the opposite, she seemed to age from a young girl, to a 30 or 35 year old, but I managed to get them back to the right ages, or at least close. I know, I'm a slave to the photograph, I always do that, with people especially. I can move things around, eliminate things, and so on for the composition, but when it comes to putting the people in, I want them to look just like the photo. Well, this painting is close but not exact, but it was a lot of fun, love it, and hope you enjoy it too.