Mothers, Love Your Children

Mothers, Love Your Children (detail)
Image size 11.5" x 14.5 "
Paper size 12" x 15"
watercolors
I've been trying to take a good photograph of this painting for a while, but I couldn't get the colors right, or there was a reflection, or blurring-always unsatisfactory. I do have one whole photo of this picture, but it has sort of a white haze over it from sunlight. I finally just took the painting out of the frame tonight and put it on the scanner, which cut off parts of the sides, top, and bottom.
This looked really nice with a black mat, in a frame with marbelized green, and gold trim.
I got the idea for this when I was teaching, and showing students how I mixed colors to get a flesh tone. The small, center mother, holding up a child with a red ball, in place of the nose, just happened. I didn't want just a plain background, but decided to add in many children's faces. The effect of glowing, green faces, as if lit up by a neon light, gives contrast to the piece.
This was a fun piece to do. Even painting all those little faces was interesting and not as tedious as it might appear to be. I always liked to draw "girls", and find myself drawing girls when I am doodling (instead of taking notes for example!). This is not like the girls that I usually doodle, however. I do like to put some drama into my girls. They usually have a cartoon look to them, since this is the way that I taught myself to draw when I was growing up.
"Mothers, Love Your Children" was done on 140 pound watercolor paper using Winsor Newton watercolors.
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