New challenges

This week I decided that perhaps, rather than taking on new challenges as regards materials and methods, I would instead switch out the type of subject that I paint. I never realized, until I attempted it, how different it is from painting adults to paint children. I have only painted a few and, admittedly, not small children even yet, but rather those approaching adolescence. But even those have different proportions to adults and require a different kind of focus.

I found a reference photo online on one of those nostalgia pages that put up old quirky black-and-whites of random families; the rest of the family was posed sedately in a line in the driveway next to the family car, but the daughter of the house was out in front of the bumper, clutching her hands together and with her mouth dropped open in an expression of astonishment or dismay, it's hard to know.

I didn't quite capture the look on her face—this girl maybe looks more like she's singing a solo in choir!—but I had fun with it, and also, because it was B&W, I got to decide the approximate colors through which she should be interpreted. I chose to do a "ground included" look, in the manner of my heroine Florence Lee, by leaving the dress largely defined by the background color, in order to make her face stand out that much more.

"Astonishment"—pencil and acrylics on thin birch board, 12x16 inches.