There's Sand in my Meatloaf

Today I had the idea that I would try to paint from a photo. I had a certain picture in mind and dug the photo albums out from under my bed and found it. It is my daughter at Myrtle Beach when she was about a year old. I always liked this picture and thought it would be great to have it enlarged. In the photo she was running across the beach and smiling, and the sand filled the entire background.

For the painting, I decided I would try to put a little bit of the water and sky in, just to make it more interesting. I am not sure if that was a good idea or not. The sand turned out okay, although it is not as white as in the photograph. I see now that the fleshtone is almost exactly the same as the sand. Probably could have used more contrast. I did do better on the light values. Once more, I had the problem of the head growing out of control. I had to do two non-surgical reductions of the head size. Also, the eyes are too far apart and all the features look sort of out of whack. But it is okay. I don't hate it. I like the shadow under the figure, and I know it is right because it is just like that in the photograph. The surf looks pretty good to me too.

It does not really look like my daughter, but she liked it. My 3 year old kept insisting it was him. My daughter pointed out that I had failed to paint Winnie-the-Pooh on her bathing suit, but that was a little more than I thought I was capable of, so I just made some yellow flowers.

I painted this while listening to the new Meatloaf CD for several hours. I cannot help but be inspired listening to his wonderfully rich voice. Now that's art!

I call this one "Beach Baby". The only camera I have is on my phone, so the lighting is not very good on these. This whole picture looks very dark and you cannot even see some of the finer details that I thought looked good. It looks better in real life.