Princes Maxima

46 x 66 cm (18 x 25 inches)

Acrylics and watercolor pencil on illustration board.

This painting was primarily executed to explore different techniques which were at the time, new to me, and I wanted to find out if they could be used together. My aim was to use a mixture of various textures, also within the face, and to stick with a subdued but varied color palette to emphasize the charisma of this person.

Depending on what style you use, it can be dangerous to add heavy texture on portraits of young ladies and children, so I knew that restraint had to be exercised.

For what I wanted to achieve, using the airbrush as a main tool seemed inadequate. This pose of the Princes was therefore an ideal opportunity to explore the application of various media (airbrush, brushwork, erasers and a lot of watercolor pencil), to obtain a painterly and yet, realistic look.