My son and daughter-in-law gave me a subscription to Watercolor Artist Magazine for Mother’s Day and they renewed it for me as their gift to me for Christmas. What a fun gift for someone who loves to paint!! Through these magazines I have become familiar with Bev Joswiak, a watercolor artist. She considers herself to be an impressionist figure painter and I LOVE her paintings! Her comments in the magazines have encouraged me to try my hand at painting people and to try and paint them with a variety of colors, lost and found edges and to paint from my own photos. This past March when I went to my daughters in Las Vegas to help when she had a new baby, I met a family from their neighborhood at a park. The daughter of this family had a white blouse on with holes in the sleeve. I was fascinated with the color contrast between her skin and the blouse and I desperately wanted to try painting her. As I’m so new to painting people, I was pretty certain it wouldn’t turn out looking like this cute girl, but with some color suggestions from Bev Joswiak for painting African-American skin tones, I definitely wanted to try. And so I asked the father and the girl if there was any chance I could take her picture so I could try painting her someday. They both kindly said yes. Her two brothers wanted in on the action too so I got snapshots of them as well. My lighting was terrible, either full sun or too much shade from a tree, but regardless of my poor photos I was still able to capture her skin tone next to the sleeves of her shirt. I had so much fun painting this picture! Although I don’t think the family would recognize the girl in the picture, I think they might recognize the sleeve of her shirt. And although Bev Joswiak doesn’t know I exist, I thank her for her articles and her amazing paintings and for sharing them with Watercolor Artist Magazine!
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