The Royal Portrait

Queen Marie paid me a visit at the weekend to receive her birthday gifts. One of which I’ll be sharing on Instagram this week as it has a little tutorial to go along with it, but after I’ve shared it there I will share it here too. However, in the meantime I want to share one of her other gifts, which is an abstract portrait I created of Queen Marie.

I’ve only ever painted one portrait, when I was young, so I wasn’t sure how to approach a portrait in a more stylised, abstract way. But once I began I knew exactly how I wanted it to look.

Queen Marie is best known for her red hair, little red doll lips and big black sunglasses, so I focused on those aspects. I added in the silver as she wears hundreds of tiny silver bangles on her wrists. The challenge with this painting was to do it in my style, which is heavily textured, but not as dark as my usual paintings are. This one had to be fun but still true to my own painting style.

I’m actually pleased with how it turned out. It will likely be the one and only portrait I’ll do but more importantly, our Queen liked it.