Grandad's Portrait Anzac Day

At the start of last summer I had a lightbulb moment; I wanted to take an old black and white photo, something historical, and turn it into a big colourful painting. It's just the sort of thing that's guaranteed to send my blood pressure through the roof and I do love a challenge.

Grandad at the ANZAC Services in South Korea, 2012

So the notion permeated in the back of my mind for a few months until the start of April when my Grandad came over. When he saw some of the portraits I've done of other family members, he asked me to paint one of him. I was so caught up in thought and so busy brainstorming ideas that I'm pretty sure I barely gave him a half hearted promise to look into it.

The timing was impeccable. I had slightly more than one week to get it done in time for ANZAC Day.

So here's the original….

Jack Gardner

Jack Gardner was…I think he was painting houses for a living, in those days…when he won the lottery, was decked out in state of the art duds and packed aboard a celebratory birthday cruise before spending the next 2yrs backpacking around Korea. 

Sounds alright when you put it like that. Truth is, he was a kid. When his number was drawn he had to drop everything and leave everyone to answer the call. I think it was his 19th birthday that he "celebrated" at sea heading towards a war. 

When the British troops first arrived in Korea they were poorly provisioned so they really had a rough time of it from the very beginning. The British field uniform of the day was totally inappropriate for the Korean winters and hot sticky summers. The Americans actually ended up providing the men with some warm (and fur lined) field uniforms to get them through the winters. 

I could write paragraphs about troop uniforms here. I know more about troop uniforms that I ever imagined possible. Seriously, if you're ever in the Hotchair with Eddie McGuire, you know which friend to phone if it's a question about field uniforms.  

Anyways….

Let's get into it.

I always start by transferring the sketch to canvas.

The uniform he's wearing turned out to be the trendy new polyester Olive Green duds and the photo itself was actually taken in Japan (where he had 2wks leave before boarding the ship home to England; the journey took six weeks). He's sitting in front of a Japanese screen and knowing the furniture styles of the era I settled on a golden-sepia inspired palette for the background with Grandad in full colour.

I was really nervous about taking on that screen in the background. It reminds me of Japanese ink painting and those artists use ink a little bit like watercolours so they can be quite colourful creations.  I wasn't sure if I could make it work without faint washes of reds and blues but it turned out to be really fun and really…apposite…with the rest of the painting.

The background came together quickly so I moved on to finishing the base coats in the foreground. 

Then I went to start building up the secondary coats….

…and the whole painting just fell into place!!

I'm still trying to figure out what the heck happened!

Everything just clicked.

I usually spends days building up layers of shadows and highlights. I call it 'tinkering'…it sometimes takes me weeks to define the facial features and bone structure and fiddle around with the colour of my skin tones. 

I was blown away with how well this came together for me. I was meant to pour my heart and soul into this painting (it's sentimentally priceless) but it was so effortless that I felt like I had cheated.  

Before I knew it, ANZAC Day was upon me. This photo was taken the night before, I actually pulled an all-nighter putting the finishing touches on the chair and background then varnishing the canvas just in time for me to grab the nearest children (I only snagged two of them) and go watch Grandad march in the ANZAC parade. 

Four generations; my Nana (Marge Gardner), myself and my Mum (Sue Caissy)  along with Caleb and Baby David. 

After the ceremony. Note to two small children in the background about to run through the middle of the parade…they would be my children, of course.

You should have seen his face when he saw us in the crowd! He was so happy, it was worth it just to see his smile. Then when the ceremony started and I watched him standing there "at ease" with the other Vets…it broke a little piece of my heart. God, that was a horrendous war. All wars are but Korea was downright ghastly. 

After the ceremony we went and enjoyed a lunch at the local RSL before we making our way home to Nana and Grandad's. He had no idea!! I had barely even answered him when he asked me for a portrait, I hadn't inquired about the colour of uniforms or asked for any details about the photo…we literally sprung it on him when he wasn't looking. 

I'm 31yrs old and I have never heard my Grandad swear, never so much as heard him raise his voice in anger.

I will never ever forget the words that slipped out of his mouth when he turned around and found this painting on his desk. 

It's possibly one of The Proudest moments of my life. 

I made that happen!! I made him say that!! 

He also told me something, we were joking about the before and after pic's and he said to me "if you had seen me six week before that photo was taken…" before trailing off and leaving the rest of the sentence to my imagination. I take it there's a lot to be said for a steady diet of saki and sushi. 

I've got two older brothers, we've all asked him a lot of questions about this war over the years and none of us are the wiser for it…he'd have us believe he spent his time there filling sandbags and polishing shoes. I don't know what he did or how much action he saw, Mum says she grew up hearing his nightmares though. But whatever it was, it shaped him. 

Those experiences in Korea carved him into the man he is today...not just the Grandad I grew up with but the man behind the Grandad persona. And he's a damned good man. He's the type of guy who is first to arrive and last to leave, who would walk over hot coals to help a stranger then take the shirt off his back and give change from his pocket, the type of guy who's 80+ years old and still mowing the neighbours lawns. He's possibly The Most patient, kind hearted and quick witted person I know. 

And when I grow up, I want to be just like him.

Darth Anakin (An Anakin-Darth Vader Painting)

For two months my son Caleb nagged, cajoled and outright pleaded with me to paint a picture that was half Anakin, half Darth Vader. TWO WHOLE MONTHS!! A mother can only take so much pressure!

I caved. I broke like the camels back. I sent him through Google Images to scout out some pictures and show me exactly what he wanted…because I'm no psychic and really, really I don't want to listen to another two months worth of "that's not what I asked for!" 

He came back with a hundred and one images that looked a lot like this… 

…which is crap! I don't want that hanging on my wall! 

Fortunately, he's 7yrs old and I can boss him around.

He deigned to grace me a little bit wriggle room to do something a bit more artsy. 

 Rather than split the canvas (and the face) into two equal halves, we agreed to try a gradual morph. It turned out to be a bit of a play on the light and dark sides of Anakin Skywalker. 

That bones structure! I was so happy with the way that bone structure was turning out. I must have asked him a hundred times if I really had to paint over it. 

The kid just doesn't pull his punches. 

We've got a bit of a pouty duck face thing going on at this stage - it wasn't intentional, it was me being all indecisive about how much of the mask to paint around the chin. 

Anakin-Darth Vader

Throw in some pod racing and some stars and I think we've got a winner. I'm still um'ing and ah'ing over those lips and Caleb's trying to talk me into painting the Death Star obscured behind his shoulder… I dunno. Every painting reaches to a point where if you risk adding more, you risk ruining it. It kinds works the way it is and it would be such a shame to mess it up at this stage. 

Jordan's Portrait

Jordan's portrait is the third and final portrait in a set of three. We had a little trouble finding the perfect picture for Jordan. He's a performer at heart - he was made for theatre. He has a wicked sense of humour, he loves his high school drama class, he's written a few songs, he loves to get up and groove, he loves showing off for the camera. He has a sense of fun that has driven his poor parents daft. 

So when it came time to pick a photo for him and Mum went through the family photo albums we found one funny face after another. I suspect he's actually incapable of pulling a casual, easy going smile when there's a camera around…on the other hand he has a repertoire of goofy faces that puts Mr Bean to shame. 

In the end we settled on a portrait that would highlight his character - something fun and a little bit quirky. 

Another 45 x 60cm canvas. 

He's in his mid teens now and when I was his age I wanted to paint my room black so I've given him a dark Paynes Grey background.

I've used a spray bottle and misted over the paint on his shirt to give it a little texture. You know that fabric…it's grey but it has lighter and darker threads throughout. By misting over it and brushing that loose wet paint off I've been able to give it a quite realistic look. 

I thought the logo would give me more trouble but it came together quite easily.

The kids in this family have the most remarkable bluish green eyes, made even bluer by the dull blue background.

I'm in the middle of touching up the eyes and deepening the shadows on the side of his face at the moment. I think I want to add a little bit more curve (and attitude) to that eyebrow too. 

Mum will be able to decide which way to turn the canvas, it works in both portrait view and landscape view. In the end she'll have three totally unique portraits of her kids, each representing their totally different characters - the first was Josh, with his very cool, I-don't-like-my-photo-taken portrait, the beautiful Tahlia, in the prime of her life over her 21 birthday cake and fun loving Jordan with one of his cheeky grins. 

Stay tuned, and I'll upload the finished piece just as soon as I've finished.

Leona's Mermaid

Leona came to me with a picture of a mermaid, possibly a pen and ink (or watercolour) painting and wanted me to re-create it with a few changes. 

Firstly, she was keen to see the whole mermaid, in the original the tail is lopped off and only partially formed. She liked the blonde hair and the full figure (and specifically requested a nipple) and she picked a few colours that she wanted to see in the painting - she's fond of the blue side of the colour wheel.

She also gave me licence to add a few embellishments and "make it my own".

I've realigned the image so that it's front and centre on the 45x60cm canvas.

The colours Leona pointed out when we were discussing this piece reminded me of a peacock. I wanted to try and keep the original style of the image (there was a reason she fell in love with it) but I've used a peacock inspired palette to pull it off. 

Things started getting a bit tricky around this point. The hand and face is very stylised, it's almost cartoonish, and I wanted to keep that style but embellish it, really flesh her out and add a touch of realism to her features.

Hands are incredibly difficult to capture. The original has that stylised, cartoonish hand with fingers splayed out at awkward angles so I've given her hand a more regal shape. I also painted it a bit larger than the original though it's still quite small in proportion to the body.

I've possibly overdone it with the curling tongs! But the face is were I'm truly struggling, I'm not satisfied with it. (Keep in mind that I'm yet to paint the eyebrows, they'll finish off her facial expression.)

It's lost some of the original expression and I need to draw that out again. I've changed the shape of her eyes (made them rounder, more realistic) and I've changed the direction that she's looking in so that's she's peering out to the viewer rather than off over her shoulder. So I'm going back to the drawing board to rethink those changes. 

And in the meantime I'll be glossing over some sections of tail to draw out the deep blues and highlight her hip.

 Stay tuned! 

The Mermaid Sisters

In honour of the beautiful chaos that is fatherhood. 
(And the bad arse daughters that my brother is raising.)

When January rolled by, I got it into my head that I needed to flex my imagination. It's one thing to recreate the photo in front of me but quite another to create a scene from scratch. That's a weak spot of mine. I wanted to develop it a little bit more so I spent a couple of weeks painting some underwater cities.

The first one was one huge learning curve...

And the second time around I was a little more confident...

My nieces talked me out of the paintings on first sight and they squabbled over who would get to keep which one so much that they're both hanging in my brothers living room where everyone can enjoy them. They also talked me into painting a portrait each of them. Just to sweeten the deal. So I went ahead and painted their favourite baby photo's too. (Miss O's Portrait here and Miss J's Portrait here).

Baby photos are all well and good but they've grown up so much since then. I wanted to surprise my brother with a more recent picture of them so I hit the family photo albums and later invited them over for a few photos when nobody was looking. I wanted a painting that would tie into the ocean scenes and a friend on Facebook suggested mermaids. It was too good an idea to let pass.

I spent a few weeks with the photos, working on other projects and letting ideas brew in the back of my mind. Mermaids. Not just any mermaids, pre-teen mermaids. Have you even seen a modestly clothed mermaid? So you can see my problem then. What do Grandma mermaids wear anyway? Surely, there comes a time in every mermaids life when sagging clam shells just don't cut it anymore. And the background? I toyed with the idea of painting another underwater cityscape in the background, to tie it in with the other paintings, make a bit of a set out of them but that just didn't sit right with me. 

 It came on me like a bolt of lightning one night when I wasn't paying attention. A shipwreck. The two girls standing back to back looking all smug with themselves and a shipwreck in the background.

So I dove right in with very little forethought. Coz that's how I roll.

The background came together so quickly but then things got a little bit sticky. 

They're aged about 10 and 11 years old so I didn't want to show too much skin. I went through hundreds of images of mermaids and mermaid clothing and mermaid inspired runway shows and photoshoots and finally I thought of belly dancers; they always have elaborate clothes and many of their outfits are a play on layers and sheer silks and laces and long tassels to cover up...

…but that didn't work out too well. Second time around I went for something a little more evening gown-ish, a one piece that started off all formal wear and flowed down into long floaty fins. 

I also did some weeding - that long grassy plant on the side was way out of proportion so it had to go. 

Miss O's face looked okay but I gave Miss J's face a makeover.

So here I am in the finishing stages…

And lastly, the finished piece.

I've added some green tones to the undersides of their arms, noses and jawlines (because there's some white sand on the sea bed reflecting light upwards), shuffled some of the wreckage around and painted a hero pulling his friend to safety. 

It is my hope that this painting will serve two purposes. 

Firstly, it's a tribute to my brothers beautiful chaotic duty of fatherhood. 

Taking a little bundle wrapped in pink blankets and moulding it into a beautiful, strong and self reliant young woman is an enormous responsibility and he's doing a kick arse job of it. 

And secondly, if you're reading this Jess and Liv, I want you to remember that you can paint your nails and curl your hair and still be bad arse - a real woman is both beautiful AND strong. 

Don't let anybody tell you that you're "just" a girl. 

You are capable of anything and everything and (especially if you stick together) you are strong enough and tough enough to overcome all of lifes troubles.

 Be honest. 

Be confident. 

Be kind to yourselves. 

Treat other people with the respect and dignity that you yourself deserve.  

And treasure every damned moment of your precious life.    

Also, in the years to come when and if your Dad ever lets you start dating, try not to send to many guys to their doom…I know, I know, they're merely males (we can't blame them for that) but they do come in handy at times.  

Tahlia's 21st Portrait

What an absolute joy this painting has been. I was recently commissioned with creating a set of three portraits and was handed a photo of one of the most beautiful faces I've ever seen. How nerve racking! Just check out that bone structure!

This was extremely nerve-racking, to be confronted with the challenge of painting such beautiful face and such a natural smile when every brush stroke is so calculated really had me digging deep.

I also took it upon myself "photoshop" a rather special necklace into the painting. The year earlier, Tahlia was out with friends celebrating her birthday when a drunk driver killed her grandparents. Those same friends rallied alongside her and the family on Tahlia's 21st and gave her this beautiful locket engraved with her Grandparents initials.

I share such a personal detail with you as a reminder to drive your lethal weapon responsibly; nobody should have to lose their loved ones over something so utterly senseless.

I'm using my standard 45x60cm stretched canvas.

You'll notice the background getting darker and darker throughout this series of photos. I wanted a pale background but it just wouldn't work with the "white" icing. 

I totally admit it…I'm making it up as I go. (#how we roll)

I made a pretty solid start on the cake before moving on to the skin tones.

At this stage I realised that Tahlia was looking much heavier and much older than her actual years. Turned out I was a little generous with her jawline and since I don't fancy being murdered in my sleep one night I decline to share the next photo online for the world to see.

This photo however is the almost finished portrait. I would like the break up the colour of the background with a little bit of blue and I think the cake needs so more highlighting, defining brush strokes to finish it off before I call it.

I feel very honoured to have been capable of capturing such a special, bittersweet moment in this family's history and give it those extra touches to help make it all the more special. 

Love you guys! xx

UPDATE:

After brushing some blue onto the background and making some final adjustments to the eyes, I pronounce myself satisfied.

Joe's Portrait (aka The Thinker)

Long before I got my mitts on it The Thinker was a work of art in its own right. The original photo was taken by the incredibly talented Vincent Valentino - Ottawa based photographer, filmmaker, and all round good guy extraordinaire. I'm not certain that when he captured this quiet Father of The Bride moment he realised that he would be capturing a little piece of Joe's soul with it...the image encapsulates his personality just that well.

So my job was easy, Vincent had done all the hard work for me. If you're in that part of the world, go and look him up...they don't make 'em like that here in Australia.

Another 45x60cm canvas...the perfect size for a study or man-cave.

The monochrome palette is so easy to work with and because I have no need to fuss about matching skin tones and colour variations I'm afforded the opportunity to really focus on textures and tones...

...the effect is rather stunning.

I finished off the piece with just the faintest hint of hazel eyes and, it seemed apt to commemorate the wedding, a faint brush of gold on the wedding band.

Every now and then I paint something so extraordinary that I surprise even myself. It should probably make my head swell with self-pride and marvel at the work of my hands but it's actually a very humbling experience. This was certainly one of those paintings...Joe tells me that he's been honoured by the experience but in truth the honour has been mine.