ANCESTORS - COLOR PORTRAITS FROM BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOS

Thomas Urry Young

Sarah Ann Wilderspin

I have been making a lot of little paintings based on old black and white photos that I have found on the internet. These two people are part of my history - my great - great grandparents who lived in the first half of the nineteenth century in England and Ireland. I've been having so much fun with this series and now I am off on a whole new tangent.  I plan to create a gallery of family portraits for my nostalgia wall.

TWO PAINTINGS FROM HISTORIC PHOTOS

I've been practicing my portrait skills by using old black and white photos as references. I supply the color and I try to work as quickly as possible.  I think that this exercise is a lot of fun and is teaching me to be faster, less uptight and more confident in painting. 

A FAMILY PHOTO

I came across an old black and white photo of my uncle Sam, taken when he was about two years old. I felt compelled to convert it into a tiny color portrait.  This painting is 8"x6".  I find it really fun and useful to use a black and white photo as a reference for a color portrait.  I already know something about painting skin tones, so I can rely on that.  But since there are no colors there for me to try to copy, I won't slavishly try to render them exactly.  I tried to be a quick as I could with this one and had enough sense to know when to stop.  If I had worked on this any further, I think I would have lost all spontaneity and ruined it in a useless quest for perfection.  The perfect is the enemy of the good.