It's always harder to paint family because I have to really pay attention to likeness. Typically I can paint and just focus on the design, because I'm not going to show a side by side comparison of my painting and the reference, but in this case I have to make sure the subject is recognizable.
This year I told my Mom she could choose between a portrait or a Portal, those full time Facetime machines that let you facetime with your whole family. I got one not too long ago and they're pretty cool. She chose the painting.
So here it is. The other thing that made it difficult is that she wanted to smile. Smiles are really hard to paint. As a human, you can easily tell the difference between a genuine smile, a sarcastic smile, a smile that conveys madness, etc. All the differences are obvious when you see them, but recreating them is quite difficult.
So that took a while, but I got it to a place where I was thinking it looked decent and here we have it. Here's how the process went.
That's about it for this one. Hope you all like! :) See you on the next post.