Forty-five minutes, one very determined toddler, and a finished portrait that looks nothing like the reference photos and somehow captures her perfectly anyway.
Today’s portrait commission, a genuinely sweet one-year-old whose parents wanted a proper painted portrait to mark her first birthday, went sideways almost immediately once it became clear that sitting still for even thirty seconds at a stretch was, in this particular toddler’s worldview, a personal insult worth actively resisting with her entire being, and I spent a solid forty-five minutes essentially chasing a moving target with my camera before I had gathered anywhere near enough reference material to actually start the painting itself.
I have been painting baby and toddler portraits here in Salt Lake City for a few years now, mostly through word of mouth referrals from families in my own church community and their extended networks, and I have learned, across dozens of these specific sessions, that the actual sitting portion rarely goes anything like the calm, composed process an adult portrait commission usually involves. Babies and toddlers do not understand, and have absolutely no interest in understanding, why a stranger with a camera wants them to stay in one specific spot looking in one specific direction, and today’s particular subject made her feelings on the matter extremely, vocally clear from almost the very first moment I arrived.
What eventually worked, after several genuinely chaotic attempts at more traditional posed shots, was simply putting the camera away entirely and playing with her properly for a while, letting her mother join in, capturing the reference material almost incidentally while she was genuinely, unselfconsciously engaged in actual play rather than performing stillness for a stranger. The resulting photos are considerably messier and considerably less composed than my usual reference material, blurred motion, half-turned faces, genuine unguarded laughter rather than any careful, posed expression.
And yet, sitting down this evening to actually begin sketching from those chaotic reference photos, I found myself drawn specifically to one particular blurred, half-turned image that captured something genuinely, recognisably her in a way none of the earlier, more composed attempts ever quite managed. There is a real lesson in that, I think, one I have learned before across other sessions but keep needing to relearn each time a new commission goes similarly sideways: the actual, true character of a small child rarely shows up in a carefully posed, cooperative moment. It shows up in exactly the kind of genuine, unguarded chaos I spent the first thirty minutes today trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid.
I called her mother this evening to check whether she would be comfortable with me working from this particular blurred reference rather than any of the more traditional posed shots we originally planned for, and she agreed immediately, admitting with a laugh that the blurred, mid-motion photo genuinely looked more like her actual daughter than any of the more composed attempts we had tried to capture together, a specific kind of validation that always makes this particular, occasionally chaotic job feel entirely worthwhile.
I am starting the actual painting properly tomorrow, working from a reference photo I never would have chosen deliberately but that I am increasingly convinced is exactly the right one. Some of my favourite finished portraits over the years have come from sessions exactly like today’s, the ones that fell apart according to plan and came together, considerably better, according to something closer to genuine chance.
I have started keeping a small, informal note in my client files whenever a session goes this far off script, partly as a practical record for myself and partly because I think there is a genuinely useful lesson buried in the pattern once you have enough individual examples to actually notice it clearly. Looking back through those notes tonight, I count at least six previous sessions over the past few years that followed almost exactly this same arc, chaos, abandoned plan, unexpected breakthrough, a pattern consistent enough now that I am beginning to wonder whether I should simply plan for exactly this kind of controlled chaos from the outset rather than treating it as a surprising deviation each time it happens again.
I mentioned this pattern to another local portrait artist I occasionally trade advice with over coffee, and she laughed immediately, saying she has noticed almost the identical dynamic in her own toddler sessions, enough that she has started deliberately building unstructured play time into her booking schedule from the very beginning rather than treating it as a fallback once the more traditional posed approach inevitably falls apart. I think I am going to start doing the same going forward, formally building today’s accidental discovery into how I actually structure every future toddler commission from here on out.
I texted the toddler’s mother this evening, once I had finished today’s entry properly, to let her know how the sketch was coming along, and she sent back a photo of the little one, now finally, peacefully asleep, captioned simply “exhausting in the best way,” a phrase I have decided perfectly summarises not just her daughter’s entire personality but today’s entire session as well.
I am hoping to have the finished piece ready within the next two weeks, and I have already promised myself, based on today’s hard-won lesson, that I will build considerably more unstructured, unphotographed play time into every future toddler session from the very start rather than treating it as a fallback plan I only reach for once the original approach has already fallen apart.
More from this author at Tinsel Vandergraph, prat.uk.