Well lookie here. A survivor of the great hard drive meltdown of 08. Just stumbled upon this last night. Had been hunting for it for almost a week now. Many of you may recognize the face smiling back at you from above that chronically cute bundle of joy. If you guessed 'Morris' you'd win a cookie. :) I actually painted two of these, the second being a portrait of the delightful Cadence all by herself in a flurry of lace (I have a thing for painting puppies and babies. Sue me.) but I've not yet located it and have begun to fear the worst. Ah well. I shall continue the search regardless. Nevertheless, I'd like you all to meet Jen and her adorable new addition, Cadence Grace. Little Cadence was actually born in September of '06...It just took me forever and a day to paint her when fighting backlog and one too many projects at once. Still, it was important to me to get this up. I'd tried sending it to Morris a few times but email gods mock me in general and now that I have my ftp sorted, the universe smiled upon me and let me finally...FINALLY get it uploaded for her. (I hope to heck you like it, sweets!) You can find the reference image I used in my scraps gallery over at DA. Copy and paste the addy into your browsers and it should take you right there. I fear Rendo's formatting with linkage has become lost on me. Been too long and cant bother to remember :P ***Linkage**** Here ya go, gang. http://stacey73.deviantart.com/art/Mothers-Love-Reference-image-115400076 ***End Linkage**** I'm not as happy with it as I could be. I tend to suck pretty badly at pastel color pallets and as such, my shading falls a bit flat here. Especially on her arm. It was also completed prior to my picking up a few new shading techniques, so I may end up annoying the crap out of myself by going back in and re-working it again. We'll see. I do like the texture I got with the background. I have a perverse fondness for Painter's pallet knife variants but I never manage to get them to pan out the way I want them too. It's nice to be able to go nuts with them occasionally and actually have it work out :P I may give this technique a bit of go again in the future. But.. You know.. using colors I actually manage to get right upon occasion. Original image size is 18 wide by 21 inches high by 300 dip. Done in Painter 9.5 at the time. Oils and chalks. Enjoy. ;)