A portrait from spring

One of the main reasons I decided to go into portraiture is that I love being able to give someone something meaningful. The thing that started this was a big desire to have portraits drawn of my children. I had wanted it for years and it didn't occur to me that I could draw it myself until a couple of years ago. And then, as I started making portraits for people and I saw how much they love having drawings of their loved ones, I realized that it felt great to give someone something that had such great meaning to them. 
This past March, one of my husband's partners from work passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly. He was our age, and it was quite a shock. He has a wife and four children who are almost the same exact ages as our four children. When he died, Jeff asked if I might want to draw a portrait of him, since I had done one of our friend who had passed away in November last year.  I debated, but didn't know if I would be able to do it, since I didn't know Greg (the partner) as well and wondered if I could pull it off effectively. Then, after a couple of months, I decided to give it a try. I figured that if it looked horrible, I just wouldn't give it to his wife, and nobody would even know I had tried. I went through some photos of him that we had gotten from his wife for a news report. I actually started with his professional work photo, but he normally wore glasses and this work photo had him without glasses. And, the drawing just really didn't look like him. So, I scrapped that, and tried again. I found a photo of him with his kids that I thought looked like the Greg I remembered. I enlarged it, but it had a fairly low resolution, which made it hard to see the details. But, I got started and it went pretty well. I went to my art teacher who helped me with some details and, by piecing other photos together, with the one I was using, I was able to get the drawing done to look like him. I even had Jeff take it to work and ask people if they thought it looked like him, because I wanted to be sure it really did before I gave it to his family.
I framed it and gave it to his family, and they like it, and they say it looks like him, so it worked out just fine. I was nervous, as I always am presenting a drawing to someone, but my  nerves were calmed by their positive reaction to it. I wanted to get his wife's approval before posting about it on the blog, and even after I did, I forgot to post this. I saw her again last night and figured I had better do it before I forgot again. The photograph is a little dark, but it is the best one I have, and you can still get the idea. I am glad I did the portrait though. I was nervous, but in the end, it was worth it.  :)