My Portrait of a Dreamy, Sweet Sara

My old friend, Scott, has a beautiful daughter named Sara.

 

My graphite and color-added portrait here is an abstract that I did as a gift for Scott which is not at all typical of my portrait style. (I did this when my vision was excellent, by the way.)

 

However, this is one of my favorite children's portraits that I have done for a special reason.

 

Scott is a former coworker of mine. He was always sharing photos of his daughter, of whom he was so proud. But Sara could not say, "I love you," to her Father. In fact, Sara had not said anything.

 

So, looking at my friend's daughter, Sara, I could see not just a classically beautiful child that admiring, passing strangers saw (her hair was a striking deep auburn then, her skin perfect with deep red lips and her eyes the darkest brown-black that I had ever seen), but a girl who was an unfolding mystery to her parents. Dear Sara is autistic and as young parents, her Mother and Father had so many pieces of the puzzle to put together in order to be the best parents to Sara that they could manage.

 

Her parents have been wonderful parents to her, by the way. (It was always an honor whenever I was trusted by cautious parents such as Sara's that I was allowed to photograph their child so that I could do portrait drawings like this one from my own photos.)

 

So when I look at Sara, I see the beauty, the mystery and all of her unlocked potential ... as if she were a child who was writing a new, amazing story with each new day of her life with her parents.

 

Capturing Sara's "dreamy" aura was not easy, I have done many portraits of Sara, some which are very traditional and I may share later on Flickr.

 

However, I hope you see the beautiful mystery which I think of when I recall sweet, little Sara.

 

[I dedicate this photo-blog to my friend, Robbie.]

Done