Have your portrait painted for Papergirl!

Here's a lovely guest post from Ian Homer, a 'Friend of Papergirl Cardiff', who has made some art for us, and has a great idea for you to be a part of!  Read how he made the art, and how you can be painted too.  Thanks Ian!

Portraiture has become an increasingly important area of work for me in recent years: portrait photography that is.

However, rather than submit photographs to Papergirl Cardiff, I decided to pick up my pencils and watercolour brushes and commit myself to a new challenge: a portrait painting from life.

It's been a few years since I even did any painting bar the decorating kind and the odd bit of spotting prints and touching up bikes.  I have never painted a visage from anything other than a photograph before so I was a bit apprehensive but excited at the idea nonetheless. Most of the paintings, largely watercolours and a few oils, have been landscapes and the majority of those many years ago before photography took over completely and became my job.

I asked one of the event organisers, @MissClevaness if she would mind sitting for me (how could she refuse?!)  so on Friday I turned up and set up studio in her house.  We chatted over a cup of tea, I found a pose she struck I liked and set about first with pencil and then adding washes and detail; the whole experience shifted from something very  relaxing to something a lot more tense as I  attempted to get a good likeness. Some more tea, some more chit-chat and a few looks over from my sitter and comments like she thought I was giving her a beard – I had to explain it was the shadow beneath her chin - I finally came up with this:

Not a masterpiece but I'm glad I attempted to tackle it

Here's the next part: I had wanted to paint @MissClevaness as a dry run... for what you might ask? Well, I'm putting it out there in the blogosphere and twitterverse that if someone in Cardiff wants their portrait painted by me in the early part of this week at a café or similar venue in town (submissions are due this Friday) please drop me a line @Ihphoto .  It's first come first served I'm afraid so please do all rush at once!