Parent and Child Portraits, Hand-Painted From Your Photos

The parent-and-child portrait is usually about a moment rather than a pose: a child on a father’s shoulders, a mother reading to a daughter, a baby asleep against a chest. The photographs that make the best paintings are the candid ones, and we would rather paint from a slightly imperfect candid photo than a stiff one taken for the purpose.

Two people, two likenesses

Every face is its own drawing. A child’s proportions — the large eyes, the short nose, the soft jaw — are measured from the photo, not approximated from an idea of “a child”, and a parent’s face is painted with the same care whether they are twenty-five or seventy. The relationship between the two heads — the tilt, the touch, where each is looking — is what carries the painting, and it is confirmed in the sketch before painting starts.

From two photographs

If the pair were never photographed well together, we combine one photo of each. The child can be painted at any age you have a photo of, so a parent’s birthday portrait often shows the child at the age the parent thinks of first. Scale, eye line and lighting are matched in the sketch.

Skin, hair and hands

Skin is painted in thin, warm layers with cool halftones so both faces read as flesh; a baby’s skin is kept softer and warmer than an adult’s. Hands, where they appear — a child’s hand on a cheek, a parent’s around a shoulder — are drawn with particular care because they are the second thing people look at. Hair is painted as masses with a few strands at the edges.

Sizes from 16 × 20 in suit a pair; oil on canvas is the default, and charcoal or pencil on paper make a quieter, lower-cost alternative that ships flat.