Jonathan

This is superb, Ellie. Look so fresh and 'real'. Lovely skin tones and great hair. I am taking notes!

Ditto Thea's remarks. Lovely :)

Ellie - Lovely, agree with Thea beautiful skin tones and hair.

This is a really gorgeous portrait, Ellie. Your palette is subtly varied and lovely, and I especially love the way you painted his hair.

Thank you for your kind comments. Interestingly after seeing this on the site I put my finger on a couple of things that were wrong about it! by (carefully) lifting out some of the shadow in the corner of his left eye and putting a deeper shadow at its outside corner I have managed to "turn" the eye to face the viewer which makes him look a lot less cross-eyed and a lot more himself! Amazing how in a portrait a tiny splash of paint in the wrong place wrecks the likeness.:( Still good to have corrected it and will put it up on the wall to embarrass him for years to come!

In watercolour, oil or acrylic, just one stroke in slightly the wrong place can totally alter the image in a portrait: it's maddening! But anyway, this is a very effective portrait: show it to him in years to come, when he has a ring through his nose and tongue, and hair coiled round his neck - and say, "but you were such a sweet little boy!". His embarrassment will be a tonic to behold. I think watercolour portraits are the most skilful of all, because you can't really alter them fundamentally when the washes have been put down - but can adjust them: when they work, they're amongst the most telling of images.

Agree with above comments, like I have also said before this image of your son as you say is of his first school photograph and as such is that moment in time when all his life is before him , the great unknown, and it is a fleeting moment, been and gone before we know it, such a lovely portrait of that time