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March 30, 2009

portrait of ben hall

by sven at 7:00 am

photo of Ben Hall

A while back I did a birthday portrait of my friend Michael Hall. Alison, his wife, liked it so much, I did a portrait for her, too. Their son Ben turned 5 on Jan 24… So, rounding out the family, I did a portrait for him.

As with the other paintings, I started with a photo.

PhotoShopped color test

To get the 3-tone design, I spent a fair while in PhotoShop using Gaussian Blur and Posterize. I wound up cobbling together a bunch of different versions in order to get the clearest image.

Ben's portrait

I didn't imagine when I first painted mph's portrait that I'd be doing a whole series… It was very helpful to be able to borrow back Michael and Alison's portraits, so I could make sure Ben's fit nicely into the set.

family portraits

Best wishes, Ben, Alison, Michael!

posted by sven | March 30, 2009 7:00 AM | categories: painting