Titan portrait in progress 12 - trim lines

Before I could finalize Titan's portrait, there was another decision the client had to make. 

Alicia had ordered a 16 x 20 portrait. I always work on a full sheet of Canson paper, which is 20 x 26 inches, and trim it down at the end. I marked out the edges of the 16 x 20 when I drew the initial line drawing on a sheet of “Sky Grey” Canson paper. Then I ended up working out to the edges of the paper with the folds of fabric. I knew I was going well outside the 16 x 20 size, but I wanted to make long sweeping pencil strokes for the fabric folds, and it’s easier to do those out into empty space than to stop at specific crop lines. I told Alicia that when the portrait was finished I’d give her the option to keep the entire sheet of paper (at no extra charge)….or have me trim it down. 

When the artwork was finished we had reached that decision point. Alicia could keep the full sheet, which is the entire image you see here (largest black rectangle). I gave the option of 3 smaller crops, the smaller rectangles. You can’t picture each crop from looking at this image, so I sent a separate jpg of each of the 4 crops so she could see what they would look like. The smallest rectangle is the 16 x 20. 

I haven’t added my signature yet - my final step - because the placement of the signature depends on where the artwork will be trimmed.

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Alicia chose to go with the original 16 x 20 . And I agree, it’s the best composition for a portrait of Titan. But a bit sad to trim off the pencilwork of the fabric and discard it.

Here's the 16 x 20 crop, and below that is the full artwork untrimmed

🎨 Prismacolor pencil on “Sky Grey” Canson Mi-Teintes paper

Portrait of Titan

(Goldgrove Irish War Cry CAX FCAT SWNE SWE SCM SEM SBM SHDN WAC RATN CGC TKN ATT NW1)

Commissioned by Alicia McCarthy.