Here is the finished portrait that I showed a progress shot of the other day, now that it has gone to the commissioner.
When I was discussing the portraiture options I had on offer – a fully-detailed graphite portrait of five people being out of the Christmas budget – they liked the loose watercolour I had done of Ann Miller, so this is similar. I like to have a number of different options for what I can do, as my graphite portraits take up to 30 hours for one person, which pushes the costs up. This watercolour took somewhere in the region of 13-16 hours, and is put together from five separate photos, all with drastically different lighting conditions. A bit more shadow or dramatic lighting might have been nice, but since the references didn't provide it, I thought it best to stick with something that wasn't likely to completely destroy the likenesses if I got it wrong!
I used a drinking straw for the splashy background, blowing the paint around. Everything is in Winsor & Newton watercolours on Moleskine A3 watercolour paper, and (apart from the drinking straw) I used Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes.
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