Time Travel through client's portraits

I have painted portraits for a long time now and in doing so, I watch my clients and their children grow up in front of me! I am always honored when they come back for new portraits of new family members and second and third generations!

One such example is  "Will" age 3. A 24" x 36" oil.  

The fun part? 
Scroll down and see the new 30" x 40" oil of Will at age 16 that I will be delivering later this week! I love my job!

Oil of Will. 24 x 36 by M Theresa Brown 1999

"Will" 30 x 40 oil by M Theresa Brown 2015

Completion of the oil Portrait going to Kenya

Ah, nothing is better than a completed, approved commission!
My 16 x 20 oil of the four Kenyan presidents, Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel ArapMoi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta who have held office since Kenyan independence 50 years ago.

My collector is from Kenya  and is returning later this month for the celebrations. Of all the mediums, oil is best suited for the rigors of traveling in  a suitcase on a long flight!

"Kenyan Independence Celebration" oil 16 x 20 by M Theresa Brown

The wedding portrait

If you've been keeping up with some of the previous posts you'll find this 24 x 36 oil portrait in various stages!
 Created from several "not so great" photos,  it is now ready to ship to Florida and its happy owner in time for her.....50th wedding anniversary!!...just one more li-i-i-ittle thing I need to do.........per her request :-) (stay tuned!)

Mr. and Mrs. Harry Davis

Ringing in the New Year by cleaning the studio!

Wow 2012 is less than 24 hours away and what am I doing? Well I had to go to a nearby farm this morning and load hay bales into the trailer for the ponies. Returned to discover a client is coming by tomorrow. Oh no! ......an art studio, is , at best, the place for sublime creating and soft music, introspective thoughts and .......yeah, right! In the working world of art, it is a frenzy of activity in the weeks leading up to the holiday deadlines...shipping, wrapping, packing, touching up paintings, emails, phone calls, deliveries, last minute orders, art supplies scattered everywhere....and I love every minute of it.
Point is, we run on adrenaline I think, so the week AFTER Christmas, when the big day has passed, the relatives are still in and out.... it is obvious that the studio is in serious need of a re-organization. Or at least a clean up!  So I stopped long enough to update this blog and now heading back to the studio, coffee in hand, to continue the clean up.

Front of art studio

Inside our studio

Unusually mild weather is making this a pleasure. Warm sunshine, dogs lounging on the porch. But in a few days we will pay for this mild month of December with highs of, get this, 37 degrees rather than the almost 67 degrees of today!

Hmmm, just why AM I inside cleaning up?

Ah well-Happy New Year!

The beginning of a large pastel portrait!

A work in progress: 30 x 40 Pastel Portrait

Here is a sanded 30 x 40 pastel that I have begun of a whole family-the two daughters, along with their horses or first to be seen......mom and dad, along with the two Golden retrievers and a former horse,  are still way-y-y-y in the background waiting to emerge from their anonymity :-).

Keep an eye out for the completed version!

The ultimate family portrait!

The Family Dog is such an important member of the family that clients love to include them in portraits of the children!

I created this 30" x 40" oil on canvas for the family and Roxie, the yellow lab, was right in on the action! 

We delivered the framed portrait a few days before Christmas and other than the older son seeing the prints the children managed to keep quiet (amazing in itself) until Dad opened it on Christmas morning. Originally they were going to prepare a place to hang it but portraits such as these deserve to be in a place where they can be viewed daily! Mom emailed me with:

"HE LOVED IT! absolutely loved it.

kids were so excited to give it to him...

and i was right, he thinks we should hang it on a different wall than where i planned!

Thanks"~ Amy Walsh, Raleigh NC

Portraits by M Theresa Brown

Working on the oil for Christmas!

This large, 30 x 40 oil is for Christmas and since I am right handed, I work it in stages from left to right! Many artists work all over the canvas and often I do too, but with a Christmas deadline, the children are being created first and the background (scene from their porch) will be painted in with muted and soft focus detail!

People do love to see it in this stage and I am glad to show it. But I usually wait until all the faces are done before the client sees the portrait so they get a  complete feel for the expressions, rather than a partial one!  Any changes are then easier! 
The canvas has shadows from the backlight of the window.

Cameo Portraits

This lovely young lady was created with a new type of pastel called PanPastels and the pastel is applied...get this...with sponges! 

However, not being one to turn down a challenge, I persevered...and here is one completed image. I love the colors that can be obtained...there is a learning curve with using a utensil rather than the pastel stick itself and not all the colors are available but all in all I was very pleased, as was the client, with the end results!

My cameo pastels of one subject are created on an acid free 9 x 12 surface.  This charming young lady has a lovely, big smile in which both  her upper and lower teeth can be seen :-) In cases like that, in which her natural tendency is to smile, a portrait created from an angle solves the problem!

Intuitive Oil Paintings

The beauty of commissioned art is that it is personal. "Custom made" is a phrase used over and over but when applied to a commissioned art piece, the painting truly becomes a part of the history, likes and desires of the client!

This large 30 x 40 oil portrait is the second that I have created for this client. Her family is indeed her beautiful animals and on a very personal note, the Golden Retriever on her far left was her beloved Bailey who passed several years ago. Originally I was going to include Bailey in the distant background but as I progressed work on the oil, the painting seemed to call for a more definitive view of the old dog. Sometimes, as an artist, that is how I work...I go with an intuitive feeling! I did not consult the client. I have discovered over many years of portraiture that envisioning a change is difficult for most clients. Part of the artist mystique and its progress is to anticipate the unveiling of a painting-not see it all laid out beforehand in Photoshop! Was she pleased? Oh my yes! Intuitive painting is what it's all about!

M Theresa Brown

The Portraits: www.MTheresaBrown.com

Mother and Daughter portraits

I loved creating this pastel portrait awhile back. My client brought it to me to create as a memory of her late mother. Ironically, at first glance, the grown woman in front of me looked virtually identical to the woman in the original photo. When I realized that it was her mother and that the little girl being read to was HER, it was one of those fun "Oh my gosh" moments :-).
This was a large 18 x 24 portrait that can be handed down to the next generation and the family resemblances admired and appreciated!

Bridal Portrait created in Pastel with Bride and Groom

Sometimes it's hard for clients to visualize the sizes of paintings, so it's always a good idea to include images that do display the sizes. 

So here I have a recently created  Bridal Portrait. The completed size is 28 x 40 and it is created in pastels.  In the original reference photo, the bride and groom are flanked by other individuals but I  added the ocean which was indeed, behind them!

A beautiful, heirloom portrait that the whole family will enjoy for generations!

FiIming at Burning Oak Studios

Working with Burning Oak Studios out of Raleigh NC, this is me on the set demonstrating
"How to paint the Family Dog in Acrylics for Fun and Profit." Participating was fun-a professional group with an easy going atmosphere.
Earlier I had both DaVinci, our Rottweiler, in the studio as well as little Louie, a Cockapoo, to demonstrate the best lighting to photograph a dog.
To the right is the demo I created in acrylics of DaVinci.

Me and My Pony

I love images like this and had fun creating this 14 x 18 pastel! What says summer memories like a child on her pony? And on a trail ride no less? The total horse experience!
This is available as a print on our website at www.PortraitsNC.com!

Girl with Quarter Horse

A large pastel of Samantha and her late Quarter Horse, Sonny.
An emotional painting that had the whole family in tears. Ah, art!

theresa

Pastel of an English Springer Spaniel

I loved creating this pastel for the family. Actually it is a gift for the mother's birthday of their adored family dog who passed suddenly last May. In the only one good photo they had, Breezy is partially asleep. I opted to open his eyes and let him peak out at the viewers with his "Are you thinking about going somewhere?" look. The daughter is thrilled...I'll bet Mom will be too!

Portrait of Teen Sisters

An 18 x 24 pastel portrait of two sisters.
Big smiles can be a definite challenge but I have created many smiling portraits and the key is to know the personality of the subjects. Neither of these girls were the serious, moody sort when I met and photographed them and the teen years need to be remembered as not always enveloped in "teen angst!"
But the important part is what the client thinks!

For years I have dreamed of having a portrait done of my children and like many of us I “never got around to it”. When Theresa Brown became a resident artist at The Cotton Company and I got a chance to not only view a good variety of her work but also talk to her about how she works and the whole process, I realized I had finally found the right person to do this portrait.

I gave the portrait of our two daughters as a surprise birthday present to my husband and he and I are both so happy with the results. When the girls go off to college this portrait which has captured not only their likeness, but also their spirit, will be a reminder of so many happy memories!

Thank you, Theresa!

-Elizabeth Johnson, Wake Forest NC

Blowing Rock NC Charity horse show

Hooray! I have completed the second of two pastels which will be sold at the two Blowing Rock NC Charity Horse shows this July. The images used on T-shirts . The first represented the Saddlebred show and the second is the Hunter Jumper show.

We LOVE this show. Held just off the Blue Ridge Parkwayin the NC mountains, it is wonderfully cooler than the Piedmont. There is something in everyone's DNA where some ancient connection to mountains manifests itself. Looking out over the incredible vews, we tend to drift into a time warp and we become our ancestors for a short period of time!

It just doesn't get better than that!

A breathing, living portrait

A fine art portrait is more than a likeness of the subject. A portrait should virtually breathe on it's own!
This 24 x 30 oil is a good example of that concept. By intertwining the likenesses of the subject with a visual example of their long term relationship and devotion to each other the portrait took on a life of it's own.

In other words, it went far beyond "looking like the subject" or what a photo is required to do. A fine art portrait creates a perpetual record of a subject on that day, in time and the interaction to the environment around them. A moment in time. A forever reminder that life is good!

Pastel portrait of Little Girl in White

Here is an image of a cameo pastel that I just completed for a client of her granddaughter. People love the cameo size. Most frame out to around 11 x 15 with a mat and are the perfect size for gift giving and small apartments and those watching their pennies!

The clients provide the photographs for these and some can be quite challenging! I create many of these cameos for genealogists who bring me very old black and whites (or even tintypes) of their ancestors and I re-create them in the soft colors of pastels.

Super popular for the holidays!