Mim and Pip

Well it's finally complete! I finished my grandparents' portrait today right in the nick of time before Christmas!

About the title, It's named as such because I refer to my grandmother and grandmother as Mim and Pip respectively (it's sort of the French Canadian term for grandparents). I wanted to name it after the year the photograph (the photo was the reference I used to make the portrait) was taken in, but my grandparents' couldn't remember the event specifically or what year it was in. I estimate circa 1952 because my Mim said it was a couple years before they were married in 1954.

This is a Destron23 first for realism (though technically I've done it in watercolour a few years back and never uploaded it to DA). It took me forever to do this, at least 48 hours were put into this. It's not perfect (especially the glass pieces, though I had to rush to get them done, and the focus was more on my grandparents), but I'd say I did a pretty good job at capturing the essence of the photograph.

The bad story about this is that I had to rush to get it done today because it was my only opportunity before Christmas to print this out in a big format at Staples. The service at Staples was terrible today. First they told me the file was too small, so I had to return home to fix the size. When I got back to Staples, I got a bunch of time wasting nonsense and then they told me the file was too big. They were going to send me home too to resize it until I insisted that they probably had the means to fix the file size. Thankfully they did and it turned out well in the end, but it took a bunch of hassle to get such a simple thing printed.

I hope my grandparents' will like this. Hope you guys will too.

Christmas day update: Both my Mim and Pip fell in love with the painting. Like my Mom predicted, my Pip in fact did tear up, he was trying to thank me but couldn't because he was hyperventalating. I could tell my Mim was emotional too, but she was trying to hide the fact. I'm so happy that they loved it.

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I hope to see you again one day. I love you Mim!!!
Cécile Marie Hesman (née Guilbeault): Jan 25th 1933-February 28th 2015