Spunky Aunt Mattie (Rogers)

This was a commissioned memorial painting for friends of ours. Their aunt was a spunky lady and full of fun – I hope I captured that in the portrait. The client said she absolutely “loves it” and it “looks exactly like her deceased aunt” – so that’s good.

The challenge with this one is that it came from a long and skinny reference photo and, as you can see, her shoulders didn’t show up in the photo. I could “create her left shoulder (our left) but I couldn’t create her right one and her right arm. You can see the problem with it being so long and skinny and the shoulders cut off. I tried painting the lower part all the way to the edges and bottom but it looked bizarre, so I painted her “floating” in the background. Her arm also looked too long in the photo so I “cheated” and shortened her arm!

Here are our friends holding the painting of their Aunt Mattie. You can see the resemblance between Aunt Mattie and her nephew, especially in the nose and eyes.

And here are three photos of the painting in progress: