Here is my attempt to paint a portrait despite not being able to see the sitter's eyes. There were so many problems with the photographs that were available to work from. The biggest problem, of course, was that he was wearing sunglasses in the photo. Also, the hat in the picture was bizarrely distorted by the flash. I was reluctant to just "take off the hat" because I had so little to work with to get a likeness that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to see the true shape of his head. I brought a baseball hat into the studio and lit it appropriately so I would have something to work from. I had to reduce the size of his hand because the camera had distorted that as well. When I started working on his eyes, I found the I needed someone to use as a model. I could tell from one of the other photographs that I'd been given, that he had deep set blue eyes. I started looking around for someone I could use as an eye model. I first used the eyes of Heath Ledger because it was easy to find a lot of pictures of him on line. That made this boy look too old. I painted them out and tried again, this time using my older daughter as the model. My older daughter has brilliant green eyes, but she is the same age, and it was simple to adjust the eye color. These eyes look more "believable" but it can't possibly look very much like the boy. I feel so bad for his parents. I've worked for weeks on this and I'm going to have to call it quits. I will offer to paint the sunglasses on for them if they would prefer that.
