In this art pastel of me as a teenager by mom, Patricia Haynes McReynolds, she used a photograph that was taken in our patio (see similar photo below of me and my step-father Cliff McReynolds).  I was overweight and had also overplucked my eyebrows.  At least that’s how my teen self critiqued this picture at that time, but the artist in me now muses upon her beautiful use of color for shading and how she caught the light on the large planes of the face.  She also added the braid to depict the style of another time.

Here’s another pastel of me as a toddler by mom.  She often drew us as live subjects, not always from photographs.  See her beautiful shading with complementary colors instead of black which can muddy the colors.
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