I was commissioned by my sister to do a painting of her children. I am drawing it from a photo that she took while they were out hiking together. This is such a great picture of them all in a beautiful birch forest!

I got a really nice relatively large canvas – 24″ x 36″. It is a gallery wrap which means it is 1 1/2″ thick. It will sit out very nicely from her wall. To get my proportions right I made a grid with my guides in photoshop then use it as a reference as I draw. You can use whatever program you have handy or even print your picture and made the grid with a ruler. I find this a useful technique to help get more accurate proportions. It helps to focus on a just a portion of the image at a time as you draw. This is especially important when trying to capture an accurate likeness; such as in portraits.

I use a soft pencil with a smaller lead such as a 2B. My thoughts are that it will provide needed detail without being too harsh on the canvas. It is hard to erase on canvas (I always use a white eraser when attempting it – so I don’t leave eraser marks) but I’ll be using acrylic paints which will cover all the extra pencil marks.

This is my canvas all ready to start painting!

Below is a list of the materials used for this portion of the project. I purchase most of my supplies from Blick. They are affordable and have tons of selection.

My Favorites:

Faber-Castell 9000 Pencil 2B

Paper Mate White Pearl Eraser

Blick Premier Cotton Canvas – Gallery Profile

I hope you enjoyed this post.

Please browse my shop to see more of my artwork.