Brian and Chip

Two of my very first oil portraits are finally finished and with their lovely owners. Painting fully finished portraits in oil are a lot different than painting life drawings in class. It also complicated things that I no longer had access to a well ventilated studio space and over the winter I was unable to work on the paintings. I learned so much from these two paintings, and I am eternally grateful to the owners for being so patient with me.

This painting is of the husband when he was a mounted police officer on his favorite horse Chip. I painted almost directly from the photograph, with some artistic altering to clean up the clutter in the background. He was working a parade and a car was trying to slip through the barricade when this photo was taken by a wandering pedestrian. The following year he was at the same post and a woman approached and handed him this photo saying that she took it last year and asked if he would like it. What an awesome gesture that the woman found him the next year and gave him the picture.

Oils on canvas
Art © Rashel aka "*Freha"

The wife's