For any painting whose source is a photographic image, a good artist must decide which elements of the picture require aesthetic interpretation. After all, we are aiming for a true painting, not a cheap handmade reproduction of a photo.

This is the very first photograph I took of our son, with my Pentax analog camera before digital cameras became affordable. To create the painting, I scanned the print and processed the picture digitally to enhance detail.

I had the idea of making this baby portrait for some years now, and had already started with the preliminary rough draft on a canvas. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a commercially produced cheap canvas made in China with a texture and primer not suitable for the quality of art I wanted to achieve. I found that out too late and put off the work during the third stage of the painting.

Still, I rose to the occasion and went on after allowing the first layers of color dry to a cure.

The second stage of the painting is called the “dead painting” an awful name, particularly for a portrait of a sleeping newborn child, because it employs cold colors for the modeling of the flesh. Better to call it an undertone. I used cobalt green and burnt sienna, with titanium white for the highlights. The result was very pleasing to me, with the full value range and the main details well defined.

The third stage of the painting is the tonal range stage, the part where I encountered problems with the canvas as the application of color was actually scraping off some of the undertone, even though the coat was already fully dry. However, I knew this wasn’t going to be actually disastrous. Extra care was the key here.

For skin tones, I heartily recommend these two colors: Aqua Green and Cadmium Red Light, both from Liquitex acrylic paints. They blend beautifully into cold and warm grays and with a tinge of cadmium yellow, they provide the full chroma for light skin color. The tones are mixed on the palette with the addition of a little titanium white for the right value and applied in thin semitransparent layers over the undertone. At this stage, the head now becomes well structured with the rendering of baby soft hair.

Rendering the form of the hand convincingly in portrait painting is always a challenge, more so in the case of a newborn child. A hand has to look capable of moving in coordination to perform tasks. Babies hands don’t have this motor skills developed and yet, the artist must show that they are there, though latent. I believe every parent is amazed how wonderfully “crafted” newborn babies hands look, tender, pliable, with soft wrinkles and perfectly manicured nails. And in this as well as in the next stage of the painting I’m focused on these beautiful details, as well as the eyes, nose, the mouth and the ear.

Almost finished, it is time now to work on the piece of cloth and the stitch work. This is the white on white technique and, while it seems like tedious work, the magic of it is that you don’t really need to recreate the entire needlework.

THE FIRST DAY: Acrylic on Canvas 24″ x 20″ by Ben Morales-Correa