You are an amateur photographer who love backpacking. Do you travel with your digital compact camera or the professional dSLR camera?

Amateur photographers love taking pictures of beautiful portrait and natural landscape as one travel on a shoestring.

It’s a common sight to see traveling photographers carrying a 80-Litre backpack, and another bulky pack of dSLR camera, expensive gears with mini tripod carrying as a front-pack.

Both bags could easily add up to maybe 17kg of carrying weight. Is this too heavy for you?

You may look super cool, like a traveling nomad, a photojournalist, travel adventurist, or even one professional photographer.

Perhaps, one inspired to be the next Steve McCurry who shot the “Afghan Girl” that originally appeared in National Geographic magazine.

So be it a day-hike in the national park, eco-tour in wildlife park, visiting hill tribe villages, a dairy farm visit or walking distantly with high hopes of hitchhiking on the dirt track.

Those are activities most backpackers would love to experience. At the end of the day, one will happily says ” No sweat! We made it!”

Well, it also sounds like any traveler photographer who proudly owns dSLR camera like an inseparable companion touring the world. How could one refuse to leave home without these equipment to capture moments in life?

Your thought maybe…

Firstly, the burdensome weight is safe from having overcharging at the airport luggage check-in service. It is well within the prepaid baggage 20kg. That is practically true for backpackers traveling on shoestring.

Secondly, the existing weight, front and back, is wholesomely balance with near-perfect equilibrium on your body. Weighing down and securing your foothold even at the most adverse condition and natural disaster, like the earth trembling underneath your feet. Suits more for a physics-freak.

Generally, there are good points for one who has the physical strength and endurance. How about a thin fellow who has the agility to move fast, yet no strength for heavy load? Oh, I have not mentioned an extra 2kg of laptops for photo editing and uploading to Facebook album.

Is it worth carrying the additional weight of 7 ~ 10kg, while your back start to hurt painfully on the first day of your trip?

Or do you consider carrying a pocket-size compact camera that might just capable of capturing great photograph.

Like any0ne else who reads this post, I used to be in the same dilemma too. For me, I recommend to bring only the compact camera.

Here are the 10 guidelines that can help you on decide-making of carrying a pocket-size compact camera can be as worthy as your trip deserve to be.

Here it goes:-

1. Travel lightweight if you don’t like to worry about loosing your expensive equipment. Regrets if getting robbed or breaking in to cabinet lockers can happen anytime.
2. Be experimental to try out all shots; randomly or intentionally. Compact camera is capable of helping you to compose your shot as good as any dSLR camera, eventually gaining more photography experience.
3. Identify your purpose in terms of function, weights, and portability. Professional dSLR camera and high-end equipment weigh 7kg. A netbook weighs 2kg, allowing you to surf the resourceful internet and upload nice photos. Compact camera weighs less than 1kg.
4. Plan for multiple short getaways rather than an extended trip. It help to record places you have surveyed. Like what many have said, “there is always a next trip” more professionally.
5. Creativity works as brilliant as quality photograph. I agree with dSLR produce better quality images, but the expensive and heavy gears doesn’t make perfect photograph. One has to be artistic to acquire inventiveness.
6. So you have joined a guided tour group? I see… Do you know scheduled tour bus wouldn’t wait just for you to snap the best shot for sunset. As time is a concern. Maximize your time with quick snapshots from compact camera, instead of leisurely waiting for great photographic moments.
7. Compromise has to be made somewhere. One cannot have the best of everything. Focus on planning your itinerary. How about a free-and-easy trip, you could have all the time u want.
8. Take time to meet other traveling photographers and learn from them. Make new friends of same interest or travelers who own dSLR camera. Your hand holding the compact camera wouldn’t diminish their self-esteem as a profession.
9. Know your skill set of handling all functions in dSLR camera. As amateur photographer, it takes time, experience and effort to pick up the skill completely. Most give up after realizing results are the same as ordinary compact camera. That doesn’t mean compact camera is better.
10. Apply the last rule “Learn the Hard Way”. There is no restriction, you can bring both digital compact camera and dSLR equipment. “If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” ~Albert Schweitzer

I’m sharing my photography based on a digital compact camera, with some photo editing on colors and contrast. There are not from dSLR camera.

Free to visit below link to view 45 shots of travel photographs from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos.

http://photos.cyperwin.com/travel-vietnam-laos-and-cambodia/

Portrait art is primarily consists of painting, drawing and photography. Photography is more of a combination of technical know-how on the equipments and one’s creativity in composition.

Drawing is the often describe as the most fundamental, and portrait painting is much more difficult to acquire.

In a concise explanation, I feel that portrait art attribute to a common purpose.. that is, achieving the goal of capturing likeness to the actual person in life.

Cameras can capture likeness easily, but a real portrait painting requires patience and good understanding, and an eye for creativity composition that might come through the brush or pencil.

Since my last post on portrait drawing, I still cannot figure out what is the best practice to accomplish a good portrait art, specifically on paintings and drawings.

Is there any secrets to achieve good portrait painting?

Is techniques or choice of medium contribute to the best learning method?

Or practice makes perfect?

Below sharing some tips for best practices on learning basic portrait drawing and paintings. I do hope there will be useful for every beginners in portrait art.

1. Always keep a small sketch book and start drawing from life subject. This is so simple, isn’t it? Well, I hardly do that when it comes to real practice in public places. I did bring along 2 sketch books in this traveling trip, however, I use it more often as a jotter book than to seriously learn drawings on life subjects.
2. Drawing from life helps to learn how to analyze reality and put it on the page. Its time to change and seriously put in some effort to draw more. Portrait outlines are the basic, the important aspect to describe its form is by determining the light and shade. Analyze and emphasize on light source for shadows and darkness.
3. Do not rush to finish the portrait art, but given ample time for detailed observation. Eventually, what is drawn or painted is translated through your brain. Focus on proportion of drawing a typical adult head. Or perhaps, start drawing basic shape on portrait features, such as nose, ears, mouth. Eyes are very difficult to draw, I hope to have more practice on this area.
4. Learn through trial and errors. “Experience is the best teacher”. Its an old sayings.. “learn from mistakes”, “never too old to learn”, and “learning never ends”. Accuracy is important. Drawing off by the slightest bit just won’t look right. Using grids as an aid helps to minimized errors and more accurate drawings.
5. Drawing is the most fundamental. Capturing the essence of the subject is far more crucial to a powerful and successful portrait than mere details, medium, and techniques. Painting is much more difficult, you have to know what color you are seeing when you’re painting. For drawing portrait, the right shading and proportionality help to determine the value and likeness, respectively. Hue and color in painting comes latter.
6. Study of body anatomy; understand what bones and muscles are behind the skin, how big they are, what their shape is. Do you know even the great master artist, Vincent van Gogh, painted a human skull and skeleton in an anatomy class while he was studying art?

There is no shortcuts for learning portrait drawing or paintings. Will I practice hard on what I have preached?  We shall see next week post..

I started off to learn photography with a prosumer digital SLR camera. My initial thought was to learn basic portrait photography, without spending much on equipment. Back then, this equipment was new to me, and I don’t have a good background of which portrait lens is best for me. Neither do I know about the term ‘aperture’ and ‘focal length’, nor knowing how this 2 terms affect the photographic results.

Are you one of the self-starter, yet troubled by deciding what is best for you?

You may say, “This is not the main concern, because purchasing a new digital SLR usually comes with a general purpose kit lens”. I agree, it is either a standard zoom lens or a telephoto zoom lens. Even today, I have also noticed that most amateur photographers use kit lens as well. There is nothing wrong with this, and this was what I did back then.

After months of diligence learning in portrait photography, I realized that the results of portrait shoots does not has maximum emphasis. In particularly the background, it looks equally as sharp as the subject. Shouldn’t the background supposed to be blur? Have you experienced this before?

Please read on to learn about the causes and basic criteria for good portrait photograph.

1. Using telephoto zoom lens, wide angle lens, or macro lens is not the key factors for blurring the background. However, it does contribute to the portraiture composition. The main criteria for good portrait is selecting wide aperture for your lens.
2. The aperture of lens refers to the round mechanical openings located at the center of lens. It control the amount of lights passes through and into the digital SLR sensors.
3. Aperture is expressed as F-stop, e.g. F2.8 or f/2.8. The smaller the number, the larger the lens opening.
4. Most of the general purpose kit lens comes with aperture of f4-5.6 or f3.5-5.6.
5. Be selective. Always shoot at the widest aperture setting. Recommended to own a lens with adjustable aperture. At least f/2.8 or lower.
6. This basic feature enable the photographer to create a shallow depth of field. Capable of blurring the background, thus, emphasizing a sharp focus on the portraiture.
7. Simplest settings on for the camera’s body is to use Aperture Priority auto-exposure mode, also know as AP mode. Otherwise, select fully manual mode and experiment it with low F-Stop.

After all, just be reminded that selecting the right lens with wide aperture is very important for good portrait photography. Below portrait photograph has clearly demonstrated the use of  widest aperture setting.

Baby Portrait with Wide Aperture Setting. Specification: 50mm, f1.8

Flickr Photo credit to R.Gringo’s photostream.

Well, who will believe me if I tell someone that I have drawn the portrait of famous pop star, Madonna. That was 25 years ago, and I did it using just a small passport-size photo cut out from an old magazine. Spending 3 days to transfer the portrait onto 14” x 14” paper, with graphite, free hand technique, without grid lines and magnification. Adding to none of my portrait work posted in this blog, it is not convincing enough on my portrait drawing skill. I am not exaggerating how good I’m capable of, but wanting to share with you why portrait drawing using grid lines is still the best practice for beginners. At the same time, below points may serve a good reason to motivate anyone who want to be a natural portrait artist.

Why Portrait Drawing Using Grid Lines is The Best Practice?

1. It is a proven technique since the Renaissance period. Famous artists using grid system to transfer scale drawings will help to produce portrait art work, that look natural and without distortion. Michelangelo gridded the Sistine Chapel, in fact he got his students to do it for him.
2. This is definitely not cheating. Drawing using grid lines is not the same as tracing or projection. There is no originality in tracing and does not help a beginner as a stepping stones. You will be comfortable, if this is just a simple school assignment. However, you will not be able to develop good drawing skill.
3. The purpose of using smaller squares helps the artist to isolate shapes of subjects, thus making it easier to define and draw accurately. Logically thinking, any shapes appear within a small square grid will not mean anything. And that is the main reason to makes drawing less complicated and help focus on smaller scale of shapes. Have you been troubled about where should be the starting point of the portrait drawing? Use grid lines, anywhere can be the starting point.
4. Another name for drawing using grid lines is called graphing technique. Its helps to make it easy to enlarge or reduce a drawing based on photograph. To enlarge the portrait, simple make the grid on your drawing paper of a larger scale than the one on the photograph. Bear in mind that you only use 3H pencil to draw the square grid very lightly on the paper.
5. Do you want a distorted portrait drawing? Proportionality is one of the key element in portrait drawing, and using grid lines will definitely guide the artist strategically. Eventually, portrait should resemble the real person, their features and facial expression.
6. Develop a strong skill in drawings before one is able to paint. This is true! With lot of practice, justification to draw accurately comes in hand when you start painting a photo portrait.
7. It is still a piece of natural art work, even with the aid of grid. Though shapes are define in a smaller squares, you are still using free hands to draw. As your skill improve, you may just focus on using this smaller grids for drawing the eyes.

Perhaps the next post, I will show my portrait drawings using grid systems. Do you think it will work?

Often times when flipping through travel magazines, you will turn into pages that show beautiful portrait pictures taken by photographers who visited the countries. The portrait looks so naturally that the subject also reveal the aspects of his or her character, personality and spirit. Portrait are basically, reflective study of a person. Sometimes, you may ever think of how to get closer to your subject and take a quick snap. Isn’t this the main purpose of portrait photography during your travel? In particularly, when time is a constraint in your short visit. The challenge to achieve good portrait photo must not place time as the primary concern. Its a matter of how travelers manage to approach and communicate, in order to capture the attentions of the subject.

Before anything get started, sling up your camera to make it prominent and present yourself relax at first glance. The main purpose is to keep your subject aware of the camera’s presence. It also allow them mentally anticipate with you, as and when the time is ripe to take your first portrait shot. Below I have listed 5 basic skill for travel photographers.

1. Always show up yourself with a smiling face and a good eye contact; the first and foremost non-verbal language to initiate a personal communication. Start of and maintain throughout your conversation. It is also the simplest skill set and uses the least effort. Neither do you need to learn a new language, nor to concern about if there are from totally different culture.
2. Ask questions in an open and friendly manner. It is by nature that most individual, in someway or other, wants attention to make known to others of what there possess in their surroundings. It is apparently interesting, when you try talking to village children. There are the best attention-seekers to adults. Asking questions like what’s holding in their hands, how he or she do this tricks, what is the names of his/her friends, or you can give them a stick of chewing gums, and start a topic to makes them enjoy. Then show your gadget, as there feels comfortable with you. Take a new snap shots, and remember to give them a glimpse of what appears in your camera’s LCD screen. Believe it of not, there will be amazed when seeing their beautiful portrait taken and even want you to take more shots.
3. Show respect to the elders, tribal people performing in a ritual, and village woman. By any chance that you plan for a home-stay with the rural villagers, you will bound onto people within these three categories. Maintaining a smile, eye contact, asking questions and talking to them may help to improve the communication. Yet, not everyone likes to interact with outsiders. First, understand that seniority people who has dwell comfortably in the less-visited village for many years. Thus, its normal to behave unresponsive, ignorance and reserved. Second, some tribal people are convinced that a camera can steal their soul or spirit. Reasons because it is their spiritual belief and religious privacy. To certain extend, there may have concern of who will see their portrait photos. Third, village women are conservative, like those from Muslim countries, who have veils covering their head and faces. Obviously, there don’t want to expose to photographers. And in this countries, males are usually the dominant members in any household. By all means if you able to make them feel comfortable with you. Otherwise, don’t waste time if people not responding to you. An advice: do not transgress into their cultural and religious belief, for due respect to these categories of people. Be shrewd and sensible; be optimistic to engage conversation with other people, instead.
4. Ask for their permission politely. It is considered ethical, and is nearly practical, to ask permission before taking someone’s picture. After all your effort to initial a conversation, don’t spoil it by simply take your portrait without asking permission. This will cause deep offense and misunderstanding. Be personal, or with eye contact and smile, give basic sign language while holding your camera. If any response of refusal in gestures or verbal, you should accept with grace. Move on to other people, time is your secondary concern.
5. Approach your subject with confidence, as it show the initial steps to manage and control your subject. Do not instruct, but talk casually; always maintain a sense of friendliness. In a quick time, get your first random shot to engage their excitement. Photography models are curious on what was taken, how there have posed, and concern about their look in the picture. Same thoughts applies to your subject as your model. Show your result to your model, compliment to inspire them, and suggest an improvement for second shot you intended. This time, you will get the better pose and composition. The result will look splendid, natural and more spontaneous. The key to achieve this is though courtesy, friendliness, and good humor.

The most accepted placement uses ‘Rule of thirds’ for composing portrait photograph. It is the basic and a proven method used by professional and amateur photographers for many years.

The design is very simple, yet requires some imaginations while taking photographs of people. A simplified ‘Rule of thirds’ divides the rectangle frame into 9 smaller ones by placing two lines across the rectangle horizontally and two lines across it vertically, creating a grid. Each set of lines divides the rectangle’s horizontal and vertical sides into three equal parts. Some camera’s feature includes imaginary grid lines when you look through the viewfinder or the display panel. It allows you to focus on the subjects and composition, instead of figuring out where to create the lines by yourself.

By understanding and applying the fundamental rule of thirds, you will not bind onto problems of where your subject should be placed in the photograph frame. This is typically useful when portrait become tighter within designated area, and probably includes one-third or less of the background for a complete composition. Examples are half-length portrait.

To photograph great portrait, always take note of the level of subject’s eyes contribute to the essence of the composition. It is also most central feature out of the facial landmarks that beautify people. The closer the portrait is, the more important the level of subject’s eyes is.

After placing your subject within the frame, adjust your view slightly so that the level of subject’s eyes is placed just above or intercepting the higher of the two horizontal lines. Next, make use of the 2 vertical lines as boundaries to help centralize your subject, ensuring that the portrait is not one-sided. Lastly, engage your subject and take your snap shoot with confidence. On top of these steps, just in mind that you are photographing people and not a pattern design. So be creative and alive, and not make your photography too symmetrical. Challenge yourself to take candid shots, it provide you with natural pose.

Rule of thirds is worth knowing and practicing, thus, regards as the cornerstone of many great portraits for beginners. Technique is also very suitable for any amateur, well pleasing to an average viewer. The resulting effort can be considered simple and ‘clean’ portrait. It’s not very unique and certainly not daringly creative. If were to evaluate and compare to the standards of ‘good picture’, in the aspect of photography art, you probably have to learn the advance methods

Basic steps for portrait oil painting are mainly for beginners, students, or amateurs. There is no fix method or best formula in learning portrait oil painting. Eventually one have to find the method that suits their ability and temperament.

In general, most of the effort is spent on developing of portrait painting from the beginning. It is also the most time consuming, and require lots of patience. Student who has an eagerness to get into “painting the person”, often realize that certain area should be corrected earlier, than to continue adding ‘errors’ by painting over it. Every stroke, every passage, must be carefully thought out and calculated to contribute to the total painting. Not for the reason of just filling up oil color, but with a justified purpose. The key focus in portrait painting should have more controlled, methodical way of building up to the final effect. The steps listed below will help a beginner to identify mistakes when there are easiest to correct in the early stage.

1) Designing The Canvas

Create a casual appearance by sketch at the beginning of the painting. This is the most crucial part of laying first foundation. Consider and estimate the positioning of hands, shoulder line, placement of the head, and its size, etc. It is much easier to erase those light charcoal lines than wiping oil color.

Having the importance at this stage, to attained a good drawing should be focusing on design and keeping the entire portrait in proportion. Detail is added toward the end of the stage.

Since this is the beginning, no painting were to start off, therefore, to maintain ease of correcting mistake, soft vine charcoal is recommended. It can be wipe off easily with a cloth if one decided to change. Once the entire sketch is done, continue to dust down the charcoal and re-establish the line with light earth color – yellow ochre. Light color is chosen, so that any changes can be replace by another darker earth color, that will show up clearly over the first sketch.

The overall duration of this designing stage usually take up about first half hour. Correction are not a major problem yet because painting has not started.

2) Establishing The Value Range

There are three basic elements used in the construction of a painting: line, value, and color. At this point, the line, or drawing stage should be completed so that the other two, value and color, can be taken simultaneously. Common mistake by student at this stage is to concentrate on the light area first, which is the easiest, interesting and attractive areas. Another cause is that most student don’t know what “color” to mix when they really should be focusing their attention on values. It is impossible, however, to establish the correct value of a light area on a white canvas, because there is no other values with which to compare.

To overcome this, student should practice comparative analysis: that is every value is accurately determined and painted in relation to the lightest light and darkest dark of the entire subject, including the background. The bare canvas represents the lightest light possible, and so I must begin by painting the darkest darks. Such as the hair or the black suit of the portrait figure.

3) Overpainting and Refining

At this stage, the painting should be roughed in and most of the bare white canvas eliminated. The subsequent stage is overpainting; refining by building up painting to take shape slowly. Student should give sufficient time for the first layer to dry, before the next layer is applied.

In order to paint portraits, one must be able to mix any color that one see before oneself, including the many variations of flesh tomes. There is no specific formulas, but rather picking skill through experience. Observe the colors in the face and mix them as accurately as possible. To grasp a basic understanding about three qualities of color, you may click here.

4) Pulling It All Together

Nothing is more important than the face of a portrait, while maintaining other areas to keep it all together. Start to focus detail on other areas such as the hair, hat, scarf, her blouse or his suit. Work on the long hair, it may look monotonous if all looks black, thus, by adding colors with different value is good to create liveliness. Add or change by refining values and color of the black suit, such as area of the cloth folds in elbows or shoulder.

Repaint the background with dashes of brushstrokes that will best complement the figure. It also helps to make the portrait more ‘stand out’ and with liveliness. Student may incorporate the remainder of the value and color adjustments as one feels are necessary to bring the portrait painting into the most perfect balance. It is a stage, much to do with how an artist feel it should look, or add and minor change.

5) The Final Adjustment

This is the stage where one resolve the details and making any final adjustment necessary to bring the color and value relationships to the best resolution possible. It is the most critical phase of refinement. The paint stroke gets smaller as on refine the face features, or the hands. Paintings should not become hash, slick or “edgy”. Certain area that one feel should not stand out too much, will be loosely rendered and less refinement. Such as the pattern of the tie a man is wearing, or the designed bracelet worn at the wrist of a woman. This way, the portrait will be view with a ‘togetherness’ as a painting, rather than one-sided focus with lots of detail on the tie or the bracelet.

Re-visit the background, to see if repainting is required. At times, it helps to bring the value of relationship closer to that of the figure in some area and accentuating the contrast in others. At this final stage, student should rely on what he/she feels is the best solution aesthetically.

The beginning is always the essential steps, where a good foundation is laid. It is much to do with technique in design, proportioning and doing major change where there are mistakes. It is painstaking and requires lots of patience. Once student has mastered this fundamental, what is left at the final stage is more to do with their feelings. On determining the color value, contrasting, intensity, detailing and to accomplishing the entire portrait painting with a wholeness. Accuracy of drawing and painting will take a student most of the way, but to be more adequate, one will need sensitivity of feeling and confident grasp of what goes to make the of portrait oil painting as an entirety.

How to send us your Photo for Portrait Painting

Step 1. Send us a Text Message

Send us a text message by clicking here. Sending a portrait photograph may take up memory of 500Kb. Some with very high quality photograph are usually 3000kb that is consider a large files. We understand that your portrait photos are personal, therefore, we don’t use it and disseminate to our artists as a training materials. As such, we would recommend short text messages that take not more than 10kb; lesser memory, fast and efficient. This will also allow us to briefly understand by listening to your requirement. All mails are welcome, and I read every mails.

Drop us a message. Contact Us.

Step 2. Send us your Favorite Portrait Photographs

This will only happen when Step 1 is completed, or vice versa. (if we know your contacts through other means of communication). Please send us your favorite portrait photos. Ensure your photo is a minimum of 100Kb in size. If you are scanning your photo, make sure it is no less than 600dpi (dots per inch). We will contact you right away, if there is any problem with your photos. My mail box is capable of receiving large files, therefore, we will still be able to receive your photographs at any size.

Step 3. Initial Deposit of 30% to Secure Your Order.

After reviewing your photographs for its complexity, we will propose to you an official quotation. This quoting service is free of charge. Upon price agreement, an initial deposit of 30% of final payment will be required to start off the painting process. A web link will be provided to direct you for secure payment. Leading you to the next following steps at checkout, the web address will begin with “https”, meaning “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure”. We use Paypal, the most secured online payment. No membership registration is required. No password is necessary.

Step 4. Portrait Painting work started

Portrait painting work started, upon receipt of payment. We assign artists who are trained and experience in portrait painting for oil painting on canvas. Skill for portrait painting includes people, family, wedding, friends, pets, etc. Also in charcoal sketch drawing, pastel portrait, watercolor portrait painting, watercolor landscape and etc.

Step 5. Preview of Portrait Painting

When painting is completed, we will send a photo of finished painting for your preview, confirmation and approval for shipment.

Step 6. You can request for modifications if necessary after reviewing

Most of our customers approve the custom oil painting once receiving the first preview email. However, please do not hesitate to email us any modification request if there is any reason that you are not satisfied with your artwork. We will amend painting as your instructions till 100% satisfaction.

Step 7. You confirm painting and pay the balance

When you confirm your painting, you will be asked to pay the balance of 70% payment before shipping. Same procedure as you have paid initial deposit. Or we can send a Money Request through Paypal.

Step 8. We delivery finished painting to you

Your custom oil painting will be shipped with a well protected package. to the address you have supplied. We ship by express company such as TNT, UPS, DHL, EMS and etc.

Portrait Painting for Young Children.
There are the most adorable and beautiful people doted by parents and adults, who always give the best whatever there can. Portrait photography for young children is good way of capturing natural pose with in a short time. Technically, it take little effort to snapshot a nice portrait, be it digital or film. On the contrary, portrait artists who acquire experience and genuine painting skill, will have to use their ingenuity and thinks of ways to keep young children in the same room with him. Keeping them looking at the artist takes even more cleverness. Here are a few ways.

1) When work actually begin…

The best thing one can do is talk with the child. Let the parents be there, but in the background. Portrait artist will find it absolutely essential to talk with the child subject. Otherwise, one will find the child either falls asleep or escapes from the chair. The idea is to get the child talking so artist can just nod or smile and concentrate on e painting work. Try opening the conversation by asking about a pet, or brothers and sisters, or favorite TV show or even a favorite color. In short, ask the child about himself. Incidentally, this technique works just as well with young children

2) Once in a while…

Artist will have a youngster who love to sing. Portrait artist can have fun with this, especially if one know the songs, too, and sing along with the child. Be entertained and occupied with this fun. Background music helps everyone relax and fills in the gaps when there is no conversation. Some parents bring the child’s favorite CD along. But insist on absolutely no video, such as cartoons. Visual media may keep a child in one place, but that mesmerized expression is too unnatural for a portrait.

3) If artist works standing up…

He will have to raise the child to his eye level. Try a small stool with a back on it that rotates – children really like that. If a child gets fussy, she might sit on the lap of the parent who agrees to sit on the stool. At times, artist may just easier to get down on the floor with the child while she sits in a juvenile chair or plays on the floor with her toys. Of course, this means moving all the painting gear to the floor, too. Toys such as Sony PSP or Nintendo are highly not recommended; a child will never look up to the artist, but will glued to the gadgets, instead.

4) Young children are inquisitive by nature.

There will be doggedly determined to get closed to artsit and start picking up paints and bushes, or may even want to work on the portrait. Curious of how the end results look like, asking questions of “why” and “how”. Its amazing how children thinks and talk. But then, no matter how nice you want to be, don’t let this happen. If you allow the child to dab around with the brush even once, one will find that the subject will want to paint, not pose, and artist will have lost control of the situation entirely.

5) After a while…

Many children will ask, “When will you be done?” or complain, “Aren’t you done yet?” When it looks like they are about to run out the door and you need more time, let them wear your watch and tell them they can get down when this hand gets to that number. This works far better than telling the child you only want her to pose “for about ten minutes,” because children have no idea how long ten minutes is. Most children enjoy this game, especially when they see that the hands really do move and thereby realize that you are not just humoring them. They are amazed that artist would give them their watch to wear, too. But it better be an inexpensive watch – don’t get mad at the watch if the child throws it.

Above are a few interesting ways for portrait artists painting on young children. These days, with modern technology advancing quickly, and price are affordable for a digital camera. One may take many photographs of children easily. What takes more skill is the portrait artist, who don’t need the actual appearance of the child, but a clear digital printout of your favorite photograph.

Portrait Painting is a realistic artwork.

Free to send me your enquiries on painting your portrait photo by clicking Contact me.

Or visit my store displaying some of the best photo portrait painting. Online Store.