Hidden Name (Christison)

by Godfrey J. Ellis — 14×18 Acrylic May 2022

Another of our wonderful young missionaries. She said her mother always got after her for touching her hair, but I thought it was the cutest pose and wanted to paint it. Her hair covered her badge, but I thought that was cute, too, and wanted to have that in the painting.

The biggest challenge with this painting had nothing to do with her or the pose. It was painting on professionally gessoed wooden panels, which made it incredibly smooth. That’s good and bad. Good because it has no tooth and bad because it has no tooth. It is easy to paint detail but the lack of tooth seemed to accent brush strokes and the paint just seems to slide around rather than sticking. As a result, I struggled a lot to make the skin smooth and not blotchy.

Below is a photo of her with the portrait.

Here are four photos of the painting as it developed.