This is my tenth review in ten weeks! I thought I might get tired of doing this, but I only feel energized after this latest session.

First Published July 22, 2023: This week I came back from a whirlwind four-day weekend with my daughter and her young family. Three adults and three kids under five years old. There was laughing, crying and a few temper tantrums, and the car drive (5 hours each way) was quite a trip.

We visited The Wilds and its parent organization the Columbus Zoo. We stayed in a cabin at The Wilds on Straker Lake.

I don’t know who liked the animals better; the adults or the kids. I do know that the boys were entranced by the herd/gaggle/flight of flamingoes. That was alot of pink! 

I came home wanting to do something to celebrate my cute grandkids. So I chose a tutorial by Pamela Vosseller called The Giving. The name is quite appropriate, since this is another workshop in the Art Bundles For Good package, which supports Courageous Kitchen, a refugee support organization in Thailand.

Pamela does a phenomenal job teaching acrylic painting of abstract (except real :)) portraits with great music and instruction. She had a reference drawing that could be used, but you know me, and I provided my own of my youngest grandchild, Hudson:

He will be 2 in December and is already hilarious, mischievous and very sensitive. 

Pamela used a reference that also had the head coming off the page, so I thought this would be comparable. She painted her whole (6×12) page red and used a stretched canvas. I used kind of an orchid background color and did my drawing on cold-pressed watercolor paper, which I do not use very often. But after this workshop, I will be using it way more often for acrylics. Love how they flow on the paper.

Even though this is a “playful” portrait, Pamela stressed having realistic facial proportions. Her method was very easy to watch and understand.

I have done dozens of portraits, and I feel like I learn something new every time. 

Here is my project from the class:

It was weird doing a portrait on such a narrow substrate, but by placing the head off the page, it works for me. I made Hudson’s eyelashes extra prominent, since in person, they are just gorgeous. 

I feel like this is the first portrait I have done in awhile that really did what I wanted it to do. Yay, Pamela!!!