Amdall Gallery

As I continue with these sketches, I’m trying to make sure I’ve got most of the configurations of family portraits covered. Even if some of them were newer and in color versus older black and whites. I’ve got the full family, me and my wife, our two girls together, me and each girl, me and both girls…one glaring omission is there isn’t one of my wife with the two girls! So, that was an easy decision about the next sketch to tackle.

I decided to model this one after scenes from a coffee shop visit from a couple weeks ago. We hadn’t been to this place in a while, and the kids had a fun time running around. Nothing brings out the goofiness in our little ones like a trip to a fresh locale. It was a great candidate for a group portrait.

I think it turned out pretty well overall. Everyone looks for the most part like themselves, which is a good start. I struggled a bit with the teeth and mouths surprisingly, which are usually not much of a problem. I recovered on my wife and oldest, but our youngest girl’s teeth still don’t look quite right. She’s got a big David Letterman style gap between her two front teeth, which is pretty noticeable in real life. But you can’t really tell in the sketch. Aside from that, I think I got the coloring pretty spot-on. There was some weird blue bleed-over from my daughter’s eyes that looked a bit like make-up, but I was able to erase it fortunately.

So, there we have it! Now I’ve got a portrait complete of my three favorite ladies in the world. What’s next? I’m actually not sure now. I posted an older sketch of just me and my wife previously, but maybe it’s time for an updated drawing of the two of us?

March 2018 Update: Over the last few months, as I’ve gotten more practice and improved a bit, I have looked back at my early color drawings. I was never really satisfied with the way this one turned out, as I don’t think my wife looked very much like herself in the portrait. I decided to make a quick return, and fill in the color a bit thicker to see if it helped. It’s sill not the best, but that may have helped a bit. I’ve included an updated photo below!