A Christmas Present

Creating a painting for a Christmas present is the most fun. There is that feeling of Santa, the elves and the workshop at the North Pole.

We got a call and met with a gentleman named Jeff Nicholson. He had an idea for a painting. He wanted to have a painting of all the houses he and his wife and family lived in.

This was to be a gift to his wife, Laura.

It was to be a house portrait of six houses. 

It was at the end of November and the challenge was to create a seamless portrait of the Nicholson homes. We brainstormed with Jeff and came up with the idea of "Nicholson Road" with their most recent house to be more prominent.

Needless to say, it was like doing six house portraits as one and all in time for Christmas!

We ended up finishing the painting late Christmas Eve just in the "St. Nick" of time.

Here is a close up of part of the painting to see more detail.


Because of the unusual layout, the painting ended up to be four feet long and sixteen inches high.
To see more of the painting, click on the following link: http://www.yourpreciousportraits.com/index.php/gallery/house

Jeff emailed us Christmas day that Laura loves the painting.
We aim to please!

Thanks Jeff for the exciting challenge!

Maria: from Black and White to Color

Maria's children and grandchildren asked her for a good picture of her. Maria soon discovered that she didn't have many good pictures. She had passport pictures, but not much else. 

She did discover a 2"x 3" black and white photo taken of her many years ago. 

She was 18. 

It wasn't much, but she asked Norman if he could come up with something.

Knowing her coloring, that is eye, hair, and skin coloring, is key to creating a painting from a black and white photo. She also gave us an old passport photo for color reference.

We liked the old black and white which captured not only her youth, but had a sense of beauty and romance not found in the passport picture.

Maria comes to life!

So much richer than the tiny black and white wallet sized photo warn with time.

Now she has a beautiful portrait; an heirloom to pass on to her family.

The beauty of it being digital is she can obtain more than one copy and request size changes.

See Maria in our gallery:

http://www.yourpreciousportraits.com/index.php/gallery/family/

Finding Inspiration for a Portrait

Sometimes when one selects a photo for Norm to do a portrait all the ingredients aren't there. After all a photo does not capture the magic let alone catches us at our best. 

My friend wanted a portrait of her daughter with her cat.

Well she had the photo of her daughter with the cat. But after looking at the photo, she decided that the portrait would look better if her daughter was not wearing glasses or a bandana.

So she gave Norm a second photo of her daughter to show him what she looked like without her glasses and bandana that she wore in the first photo.

This helped Norman to know the person better when illustrating them for a portrait.

Mission accomplished!

 Norman added her mom's favorite color of green to the background using the plaid shirt as the inspiration for the overall color look. The color of the T shirt was changed to show of the cats upper body that gets lost in the first photo. It also works well with the colors in her plaid shirt, and suggestions of that color are added to the background to pull the color palette of the painting together.

Here is another example of what can be accomplished by the use of more than one photo.

Happy Birthday to Pat Torok

Deb Dougherty had seen us at the Lakewood Arts Festival. After seeing some of Norms portraits, Deb started to come up with an idea for her Mom's 80th birthday. Deb and her siblings wanted to do something very special.

Deb and her sister Mary came over to brainstorm a couple of ideas for a painting for her mom. Combing through their family pictures the sisters realized that it would be great to have a portrait of their mom and dad together.

 This was the photo they liked.

They liked the expression of their dad. It captured his sense of humor and his coffee mug that was usually in his hand. But Deb and Mary soon realized that their mother's eyes were closed. Deb reported that she usually complained when the camera captured her that way. At first we worked to paint the eyes opened but it seemed unnatural. Something else was not working.

So we asked for more pictures.  Deb brought us several more. So we out of the second group of pictures we picked this one.

Deb assured me this photo was a good capture of how her mom looked.

Well she even had the same earrings.

 Using the two above photos for reference, Norman came up with the following painting for Pat's birthday.

Here is a portrait of Art and Pat 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM

 with love from Deb, Mary, Michael, Chris, Joe and Katie

We thank Deb and her family for this wonderful opportunity of doing their parents portrait.

Hope to See You There!

For the Love of Painting

When Norman isn't working on a clients portrait, he works on his own stuff. 

The blossoms on our magnolia tree were so beautiful this past spring I asked Norman to photograph the tree. The blossoms seem to last only but a week and then the leaves take over. So it was a nice surprise to find that Norman decided to paint them later. Now I can have a bit of my favorite part of spring all year long.

Here Norman did a painting of salt and pepper shakers that stood out of the clutter on our kitchen table. I was amazed how such everyday items could make a fun painting. The shakers look quite formidable here and seem to have a personality all of there own.

This is his most recent work. After Norman did a house portrait for a client he work on this one that was inspired by one of the many lake cottages in the quaint resort town of Lakeside, Ohio.

Since many of these interim paintings are not the direct result of work that he does for Your Precious Portraits, he now has another website: http://norman-drake.artistwebsites.com where you can find prints of his work for sale.

The nice thing about this site is that you not only can purchase a print, but you can choose size, paper, format, mat color, and what kind of framing. You also can purchase greeting cards of his work as well.

If your in the mood to shop check us out at: http://fineartamerica.com/shop/norman-drake.html

Portrait Celebrates 50th Wedding Anniversary

T H E   G R O U D L E   H O U S E

 Home of Sandy and Glen Groudle

To celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Sandy and Glenn Groudle, David and Tim Groudle and their wives Heather and Sue, got together to commission a home portrait for their parents. The family knew that Sandy always wanted a painting of the family home. A home of many happy memories. 

So here is their gift to their loving parents and in-laws. To Sandy and Glen Groudle:

HAPPY 50TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!

The Beauty of the Cleveland Metroparks

One of the things that impressed me upon moving to Cleveland many years ago was the richness and beauty of the Cleveland Metroparks. I forgot about this painting Norman did, until we adding some prints to sell for the Art Festivals we are participating in over this summer.

This is of the Rocky River near the Lorain Bridge. It always amazing me that such a serene place exists below the clutter of homes, highways, traffic and strip malls of Cleveland and its suburbs.

In Memory of Jean Lowry

I had received a call from Ernie Lowry. He wife had recently passed away and he wanted a portrait to be done in her memory.

He had a three by five photograph, that was taken of them many years ago, that he had treasured.

Although he had many photographs of her, this particular photo meant much more to him. 

Before he knew about Your Precious Portraits, he paid to have the section of the photograph of his wife enlarged as you see here and framed. But with older photos you can only enlarge so much before you loose detail.

The photo was cropped, retouched, enlarged to 8" X 10", matted and framed.  He paid $400 for the work done to create the 8" X 10" photo. Needless to say he was very disappointed. 

So from an image no larger than half the size of three by five photo, Norm went to work. 

For the same investment, Mr Lowry got a painting! 

For us we got to meet with a wonderful man who loves his wife and misses her dearly. We got to hear his story about the love his wife and the wonderful woman she was.

Thank you Ernie, for telling your story and giving us the opportunity to do this painting.

For a closer look of the painting click here.

Photo Diary of the Festival

This past week was a hot one! 

I took off a week from work to work all the harder to help Norman get ready for the Festival of the Arts at St. John's Medical Center. This was Friday morning the first day of the show. 

Our tents had to be up and ready by 9:30.

Norm is EXHAUSTED! 

We started Thursday afternoon and thought we would stroke out in the heat and be found in the goose poop by the pond.

Our tent is now complete and it is looking like rain. Here is the first peek inside.

Norm hinged 3 doors together and painted them with 3 shades of light green. The doors added more display space in our tent. 

I also displayed some prints of his photography in my grandmother's old wicker suitcase.

More matted prints of Norm's work are displayed in the opposite corner.  As the day progressed and the skies cleared I moved them out by the front.  

The plastic white lattice that we used for the sides of the tent worked well for hanging more paintings. 

It gave the tent a gazebo feeling.

So here is our tent and we are finally ready and waiting for our first customer.

This can't be our first customer?!?

The geese kept us company and searched for droppings of kettle corn from the passers by. 

But, thank God, our first customers started to arrive. 

My turn to guard the fort. 

I kept to the shade when the sun came out.  Unfortunately our tent was in the sun unlike the lucky ones that had shelter under the trees. 

Sun block was a must!

I think this was our youngest customer.  What a cutie!

 This is a shot of the many tents under the trees that lined the walking path on the St. John's Medical Campus.

At Sunday's close the artisans packed up and left the trails for our geese companions.

All in all, the festival turned out well. The sun came out and it cooled down enough that many people came out to visit.

We met many wonderful people.

I hope to be telling their stories through Norm's future illustrations.