"Madonna" Watercolor Portrait

Watercolor, 9x12, available

After all the animals, I decided to dive in. As a first portrait in watercolor, I'm pretty happy with the results. As always, I see the places I would do things differently but I learn as I go. My inspiration was a photograph I took a few years ago of a little girl holding one of my baby goats. It was so sweet and she seemed to be in another universe and, so did the baby goat—they were communing on another level. I think that came across. I'm really enjoying the process and allowing myself to take liberties with my artwork now, not wanting it to be an exact representation of the moment but just the feel of it.

I love portraits and have done some in colored pencil too. I'm working on a piece of my website now that will have all of my favorite artwork through the years. This has been my most favorite colored pencil portrait I've created—it's of my son when he was about 15 months old.

We had taken him on a "hike" in Boulder when my family came into town. Of course he was carried most of the time since he was so little. At one point he wanted to walk, so we put him down and he tottered off the path a few feet, sat down and immediately had these wildflowers in his hands, he must have seen them as we were walking by. Precious boy.

I love the play of shadows across faces, it's often not something you see a lot of in photography or portrait painting, but it makes my heart so happy. Do you see the way his eyelashes cast shadows on his nose? That makes me smile. So, I will be starting to play with that in watercolor soon—it's a little intimidating right now :-) That's the one nice thing about colored pencil, the buildup is slow. With watercolor washes, it feels like you have to rush a bit on each layer before the paper dries up—especially here in Colorado!

Love to all from the Mother Ranch,

Julia

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