teri's studio journal: Portraits 24 & 25 (& Fini!)

2.13.2023

Hugo E. Robus, Jr.
(My husband's father, 1942)

I have come to the end (pretty much)

of my portrait explorations from tiny b&w photos

in the Shaw Field yearbook for the Army Air Forces Training Center, class of 1942.

For a refresher as to what I am talking about,

the link 👇 will take you to the first post in the project.

I had decided that my final portrait would be of Matt's dad. But it had been awhile

since painting those portraits,

so I warmed up by painting another one first.

Robert L. Simpson, Cadet

I didn't put as much of a gap in his teeth as he actually had ... when

I tried, it just looked weird.

To begin Matt's father's portrait, I made a charcoal sketch of him,

and used fixative to set the charcoal.

I used a hair dryer to dry the casein fixative, a pump bottle by SpectraFix.

My palette, ready to go.

I only took two progress photos.

Hugo E. Robus, Jr.

Ok, I think I am finally saturated with painting portraits from

the Shaw Field yearbook.

It was very good practice, though, to paint a portrait from a tiny black & white photo.

Admittedly, some of the pictures are wacky

but that is how I felt like doing them.

There are some I really like, others I don't.

I asked Matt (my hubby) what actually was the color

of the cap, shirt and tie. He told me they were probably khaki, with the tie being

a darker brown, or black. So I tried to be true to that for these last two.

I tried to make a nice photomontage of the portraits, but could not figure out how

to do 25 of them ... so this is just a sampling of about half.

(I used Canva ... but did not really know what I was doing.)

It is so cool to see even these few together.

teri's studio journal