Drawing children's portraits - capturing the moment

The past couple of days have been busy – and I realized that it’s been a while since my last post. I do admire those bloggers who have a new post every single day. I must try harder to keep to more regular posting!

Below are two more portraits – the sleeping baby is only four weeks old – I’m sure most parents will remember looking at their sleeping infant will great fondness. A sleeping baby is a treasure, all too soon they are running around and then suddenly all grown up and going to school.

Sleeping Baby - 115mm x 165mm
Pencil on paper
Carol Lee Beckx ©2011

Little girl - 115mm x 165mm Pencil on paper
Carol Lee Beckx ©2011

This week I completed a number of small paintings and on Thursday, a double portrait of two little girls was delivered. I was fortunate to have a couple of really good images of the siblings to use for the portrait.

Often it is quite hard to get a photograph of two children together where both are in good positions for a drawing. Usually one has to use a combination of two or more photographs. The important factors to remember are that the scale and the light source of both images should be the same. Mechanical cropping and joining with a photographic programme is useful to a degree, but I find that it’s best to work out a complicated composition with some sketches to join the images together.

When photographing children, the window of opportunity for achieving a good image is small. Their interest wanes rapidly, and as they get older the desire to clown for the camera increases the longer the shoot continues. It’s best to catch children unaware before they realize that they are being photographed. Professional photographers have many tools that they employ when photographing children and their aim is to produce a formal photographic portrait. I prefer to work from more casual candid photographs for my children’s portraits – I like to use a relaxed pose that captures the essence of the child’s personality.

Do have a look at my  Pencil Portraits  for more about the portraits, and here on the  Portraits page on my website for more images.

Two new pages - Pencil Portraits and Portraits in Oil

A commissioned portrait makes the ideal gift on the occasion of a new arrival in the family, a birthday or simply to have a lasting memento of a someone special. 

Daniel - pencil on paper 17cm x 12cm

  ©Carol Lee Beckx 2011


Please have a look at the two new pages that are listed on the top right hand side of my blog. These pages, Pencil Portraits and Portraits in Oil  give details of how one can commission a portrait. 




Jess - pencil on paper - 17cm x 12cm

©Carol Lee Beckx 2011

Cleaning up Brisbane - and back to work

When I wrote about the current exhibition on at GoMA Brisbane I didn’t dream that the galleries would be under threat and then flooded. I had planned to write a follow-up post on other exhibits on show. Then the floods struck and life was turned upside down. My resolutions of doing something everyday were also scuppered – painting in a house with seven children under seven years old was not feasible. It also seemed slightly frivolous to be trying to paint at a time when so many people had lost their homes and businesses.

But the resilience of people in my new city is uplifting and inspiring. In flooded areas complete strangers arrived armed with their gumboots, shovels gloves and brooms to clear the mud form the city.

So back to the Exhibition 21^st Century: Art in the first decade. The artworks in the galleries were moved to the upper levels and none were damaged but the buildings in the Cultural Precinct will be closed for some time.

When the galleries re-open, I am not sure whether the Current exhibitions will be extended or whether future planned events will take their place. Nevertheless, I want to talk a little more about some of the works that I enjoyed during my previous brief visit.

This gallery space was a wonder of colour and texture on a large scale. Viewers are dwarfed by Tayou’s huge brightly coloured assemblage Plastic bags 2001–08 hanging from the ceiling. This assemblage is made of thousands of coloured plastic shopping bags - the use has transformed the ‘throw away’ into something beautiful.

It’s extremely tactile – people kept reaching out to touch. The Gallery attendant was hard pressed to keeping the viewers away form the work. Some were  prompted to lie underneath it – as though daring it to break free from the ceiling and envelop them.The Gallery website notes on this work call it: 'an ominous spectacle of consumerism'



Left/Right Side by Carsten Höller is a source of great fun for kids – they can slide from the upper floor of the foyer down to the floor below. The shiny sculptural stainless and polycarbonate shapes sweep the children swiftly downwards.

We usually associate Lego with brightly coloured blocks – the transformation to white makes them recognisable but so different. The cubic structural evolution project 2004 by Olafur Eliasson ran the length of the Lower gallery space. It is a project where  children can create an ever changing metropolis using white Lego blocks.

The activity isn’t confined to children however – there were a number of adults as engrossed in construction as the children. As a counter-point running along the adjacent wall was the brightly coloured I wish your wish.

The Bentinck Island artists are a group of very senior female painters of the Kaiadilt people who live on Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The artists have said: We have painted one of the most important places on Bentinck Island. This is where King Alfred was born. This is his country. King Alfred was Sally's big brother and he was also Netta's father. He was famous as strong warrior and leader, he was feared by other tribes. This place is special to all seven of us. We all have close connection to this country. That is why we picked it as painting for us to do together

You can read the previous post on this exhibition here.

So now I'm moving forward and making another start.Just in case you think I've been completely idle I will be posting what I've been doing soon - no more long delays between posts!