Custom Portraits Online by Miranda Aschenbrenner

This portrait is nearly finished, I just have a few tiny details to add. This is Chani and her son, winner of my portrait giveaway back in November. Later this week I will be shipping this drawing across the world all the way to France!

Chani’s portrait is coming along; I anticipate finishing it up this weekend. Here I have done most of the shading on Chani’s and her son’s face, as well as her son’s jacket. The shading actually involves three layers. One with a hard pencil to map out the values, a second with a softer pencil to get the mid-tones of the skin, and a third in an even softer pencil to get the shadows. It’s this gradation from light to dark that creates the illusion of three dimensions.

You may be wondering what happened to my portrait giveaway that happened nearly two months ago. Well, here’s an update!

Chani, a lovely woman from Paris, was the winner of a free 5×7″ pencil portrait. She sent me a picture of her and her adorable son, but by that time I was deep into Christmas commissions. She kindly agreed to wait until January for her picture.

Here is the preliminary line drawing for Chani’s portrait. Each of my drawings start out this way as a map for the shading. In some ways, this is the most important part of the portrait. If the lines are even a millimeter off, it can throw the whole thing off track!

This will be the third piece of mine that has made it overseas, the first two being a small drawing and painting that went home with my fiance’s best friend.

Southsea Pier, Oil on Canvas, 36x12", 2010

At long last, I can finally show you the painting commission I’ve been working on for the past couple of months.

Med commissioned this oil painting of an ocean scene as an anniversary gift for her husband. It shows the beach in Portsmouth, England where they used to live. This painting features the South Parade Pier and Spitbank Fort at Southsea, a place where the couple spent a lot of time together.

The most challenging part of this painting was the beach. It’s a pebble beach, not a sand beach, and the texture of the pebbles was evident in all the reference pictures I used. I had to figure out a way to show the pebble texture without painting each individual pebble separately.

First, I painted a textured ground, using a dry brush technique. Then I layered dark spots to represent the pebbles. Next, I added a white highlight to the left side of some of the spots. The last step was to dab the pebbles with a tissue to help them appear to fade into the background. The result is an illusion of a pebble beach!

Do you want to commission a unique painting to commemorate your special day? Email me!