This has been the summer of commissions, for which I am very grateful. This is the first piece in a series of commissions for the same family. Earlier this year, the son of a friend from high school and her husband graduated from high school. As you can tell from the photo, he was an avid soccer player and has been fortunate enough to continue playing in college.

This painting is based upon the team photo that was taken to commemorate his senior year in high school. I was fortunate that this piece came out on my first attempt, after several practice sketches. As usual, I began with a light pencil sketch to flesh out the proportions and positioning. After getting the general form, I moved on to the inking phase, where I added in the finer details, such as the texture of the hair.

This piece was a little tricky due to the prevalence of dark reds and blacks, which I was able to offset by using a fair amount of white to outline and set off the figure from the background. I find human portraits particularly challenging because of the skin, which I built up using multiple layers of hand-mixed paint to achieve the desired color and shading.

After this, I am definitely looking forward to doing more portraits in the future.