Gandhi Family Portrait

Completed 14” x 20” watercolor of the Gandhi family.

Whew! This one was a long time coming! I created this 14” x 20” watercolor painting for a friend who didn’t have any photos of her whole family all together. Her mother passed away last year, so I was deeply honored to be asked to paint this family portrait, and I really wanted to get it right! My friend sent me photos of each family member and their outfits, so this painting of seven people was based on at least 15 different photos (all with different light sources) - it was quite the challenge!

You can see the photoshop mockup I did for reference in the image on the left!

First I went through all the photos she sent and chose the shots that I thought would make the best painting references, then I composited them together in Photoshop to figure out my composition before taking it to paper and paint. I definitely procrastiplanned this one to death - I was so afraid I’d get six likenesses done then somehow screw up the seventh one and have to start over! It ended up being a joy to paint, though. I kept noticing sweet little family resemblances between each of them, and I loved painting the colorful fabrics and sparkly accents on their traditional Indian clothes - I got to use fun iridescent and metallic paints for some of those details!