Mother and Child Oil Painting

"Seania and her Baby" (10"X7", Egg Tempera on Composition Board, $250)

I did this years ago, after having taken a class in egg tempera-style painting. That means that thin oil color glazes are painted into wet applications of the highlights, done with a mixture of titanium white powdered pigment, varnish, and a whole egg. This highlight-stuff ends up looking like toothpaste, and you keep it in a film vial.

The painting was done from a photo of my cousin Seania revealing one of her baby sons while sitting on a porch glider. I made up the colors in the hair. Seania is pretty hip, but she doesn't multi-color her hair. She was also wearing a white sweatshirt and red stretch pants, so I changed what she was wearing to make the picture more... picturesque. The fact that it's a mother-and-child picture makes it kind of classical in a madonna-and-child way, so it has that working for it.

I did what I could with the talent that I had then, but like in the last post, there are things that I'd do differently now. Overall though, I'm happy with the results that I got while working in this time-consuming and small-format style.