Game On

I saw this photo on my friends facebook page of her daughter and her homecoming date and was immediately drawn to it.  It just had a Norman Rockwell appeal to it.  They are just so dang cute!  So of course I asked my friend if I could paint it and she graciously said yes.

I started out by using the Accurasee free program to place a grid over the picture.  I then drew some additional grid lines over the more complicated areas using my photo program.  Here is what it looks like. 

Then I sketched out the drawing onto tracing paper using a 5 X 7 grid under the tracing paper.

I then transferred my drawing to a toned (and dry) 5 x 7 painting panel using tracing paper and the end of an open paper clip.  I use the paper clip because it gives me fine lines but doesn't destroy the original drawing by adding pencil marks when I trace. 

Then I painted using the traced drawing.

I wanted to add a narrative to why they were looking at each other this way so I added a pair of red high heals.  I wanted it to look as if they were having their first disagreement over which shoes she would wear to the dance.  My intention was to do a larger painting of this, but I wanted to see if it worked by painting a small study first.  Wow, tiny faces are HARD to paint small!  Not sure if my "story" is easily read.  But it was fun to paint anyway!