Portraits

I agonised over what to get my stepfather for his 70th birthday. He's a very unmaterialistic person who neither wants nor needs much, apart from his books, but we wanted to give him something special. My husband came up with the idea of commissioning a pair of portraits from two local artists (a.k.a. our children). So I put them to work with a photograph of the birthday boy in front of them and asked them to look at his face, then draw him in whatever way they chose.

R went for the full-length portrait, dressed him in blue and yellow striped pants and depicted him holding presents in each hand:

K worked more directly from the photograph, adding wrinkles and colouring the skin pink ('because that's the closest to skin colour we have' - clearly I need to buy these children some skin-toned markers!):

The frame I got for them had spaces for three photos so we added a central picture with '70' outlined in large letters. Each child filled in a letter with patterns and K wrote a birthday message at the bottom.

I was so pleased with the end product that I'm sure we'll be doing this again for some special person. Brace yourselves, family members - you too may soon be immortalised in a pair of portraits!