J by Bill Hone

I do like the pose and joy on the baby's face. However, I am a little uncertain about the green tone on baby skin as it looks a little unearthly. The eyes are beautifully done.

Thanks Thea. I have been "told-off" about the green tone already and I appreciate that it does look a bit strange. As you can guess I was experimenting with different colours and maybe overdid things! Thanks for the nice comment about the eyes. I spent ages trying to get these right and had to start from scratch on one of them when the picture was nearly finished. I was trying to see if I could capture the likeness of a young baby (my grandson) when everyone was telling me "they all look the same at that age." Bill

Hi Bill, I have done quite a few portraits of my grandchildren as babies, toddlers and a bit older and have found that getting very young skin tones is always tricky and I appreciate that you have tried to inject something a bit more exciting into the mix. I know a lot of child portrait painters do use some subtle shades of green in their portraits and it does work well. I think you are right that you probably got a bit enthusiastic with the green tones and if they were more suggested rather than being obvious then this would have worked. I usually add touches of cobalt, cerulean, alizarin, some purples, etc to my portraits, but I am not as brave with you with colours I feel. I think the close up pose is really striking and I always love the way it makes the viewer really concentrate on the features and expression. I have painted a few portraits where I try and get close in enough to lose the hair, which I find often distracts (and I can't paint hair well at all!). The one thing you have achieved, and in my view is the hardest, is to make the face look babyish. So many baby portraits end up looking like small adults, but you have got this one spot on from that point of view.

Many thanks for the kind words and the constructive comments Thea. Much appreciated.