"Great-Granny"

                            
 The person in this portrait will always hold a very special place in my family's hearts. She was a beloved mother, grandmother, and also a great-grandmother. This portrait is of my great-grandmother Hasaba Spence, who I personally always called, Great-Granny. Great-Granny unfortunately passed away when I was around eight years old due to a stroke. Although I was at a young age, I will always remember how kindhearted, down to earth, and how much of a loving person she was. She was always so happy to get to see my family and I when we'd come to visit, always smiling from ear to ear while she was hugging and kissing on all of us. I personally wanted to paint this picture for my dad because Great-Granny had a big part in his life especially throughout his childhood. Throughout this painting, I used a dabbing motion all over her skin to portray the crackly, roughness of older skin along with including a lot of highlighted and shadowed areas to continue to give it that effect. The times I did not use the dabbing technique was on her shirt because I wanted to give her shirt the painter like feel of smoothness and easiness to blend the colors and not let the skin have the same texture. Also, for her hair I used whisp like strokes to try and give it the layered look with lighter colors on top of the darker values. My goal in this painting was to make her look as realistic as possible so my family could personally recognize her. For the background, I decided it would be best to use a light but textured look to give the picture unity and pull everything in around her body. One of the harder parts in this portrait was creating her glasses with very thin, almost transparent lines. If I was to do this over, I would try to give her glasses the more glossy look.