Connected
I have had this big white canvas at the entrance of my house for over 2 years, waiting for inspiration to strike. My neighbor always joked about 'the polar bear playing in the snow' painting. So, when the opportunity of a show came up, this was to be the center piece in the exhibit.
I am still learning about acrylics and I haven't done a portrait this large before. The canvas is 4 feet by 3 feet, almost as tall as me! I wanted to portray my kids and their relationship. It was fun to observe them and think of what they were going to be doing, then it was posing time. I played with the composition in many ways. Soo many sketches. I moved into making cutouts to try things out. When I settled into a composition and it was sketching time, it was frightening to put the first mark on the monster canvas.
I felt good about the placement and overall proportions and I went to bed. The next day I re-drew my girl's head like 10 times and was getting discouraged. That was all the progress I made, which at the end of the day was not progress because, it didn't feel right. That is when B, my techy husband, came to the rescue. He works at Microsoft on the HoloLens device, and happened to bring one home that weekend. In my head it is a miracle how it all works and how it all worked, but he was able to place the picture I was working from in the augmented reality device and I was able to check the proportions and head/body relation, it was amazing! It saved the painting.
About the painting: E, my girl, is a gymnast and she does this pose in her beam routine, love how elegant and steady she seems. She is a hard worker, always improving, looking ahead. A, my boy, loves his books and even his brother and sister over him don't distract from his reading. He likes to understand the world and explain things beautifully. N, my youngest, adds color to our lives. He does things his way (mismatched socks and shorts any time of the year) and always reaches high. The placement of the figures is like an optical illusion and they are all connected to each other, sharing a tight space because they share a life together. They are all very different, yet part of our unit, our family. The background is rich, to represent their possibilities and imaginary to represent how they created their own reality.
