Portrait of Babka

My mother-in-law has been asking for her portrait in pencil ever since she moved in with us in 2003, so I got her to sit still long enough to watch "The Price is Right" one morning this week.

Her expression changed like a baby's... which was rather challenging. And she is not one to smile much in her latter days, either.

I like the touch of sadness combined with the bed in the background. It hints that this is a woman waiting to sleep forever, which is more than true. We hear about it often enough to make sure she is taking her Zoloft every morning. However, she isn't singing my praises about the portrait, nor has she worked up the courage to ask about the bed!

I only took 30 years off her 88-year-old neck. I would think that should make her a little happy!

Photoshop trials

What Mary's portrait needed after three Fridays of careful labor baffled me. I took it to a critique and got advice to soften edges like around the face and advice to harden and darken edge of the face.

Photoshop allowed me to play and see. Right away I rubber-stamped some of the background in the upper right to the area behind the neck. HUGE improvement.

I also wasn't sure what was wrong with the neck, and got helpful insights from Judy Carducci after the critique. I was tickled that Judy felt I had nailed her long graceful neck, but she said there wasn't enough of the base of her left sternomastoid, where it attached to her collarbone. "It would never be a sliver like that," she said and she was right. My photo shows that the trachea was the issue, and all I need to do is pull it up and back, soften and add a bit of lavender to model it more. That should give the sternomastoid the space it needs.

I'm ready to dig out the brushes!