This was my first class with you Umberto and it was wonderful. Your English is just fine and I had no problem following with you.

My granddaughter is a dancer and a photographer captured her in a beautiful pose from her lyrical dance routine. I had a plan to paint her as a gift for her birthday and your class was exactly what I needed to help me with the process. Her birthday is Sunday so I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to make this happen until I spotted your class. It took me seven tries to draw her out and three attempts at painting her. I was determined to stick with it!  Yeah for me!!!!

I liked the idea of first drawing the outlines with pen, but after the first attempt I did not like how her face turned out, so didn’t pen her face on the next two. I also did not like the one I tried with a background, so left that out as well. I did so many practice sheets to figure out how to blend the dress and finally found something that worked. I wanted this to be as close to the real photo as possible since it is a gift for her. 

I struggled the most with getting her face as accuate as possible. Each time, her eyes were too big, but I finally just went with it and did the best I could. I also had a hard time getting the shadows and highlights correct. I still struggle with blending wet on wet, but your guidance with that did help. I just kept repeating you laying the paint down. 

Your class project is beautiful, so I was hoping to paint the ballerina as well, but just last night my granddaughter showed up to show me wearing her new ballerina dress.  After seeing how beautiful she was, I just might need to attempt painting her again: If I do, maybe next time I will use the spirit of your ballerina and leave out the details of her face. 

Thank you again for your wonderful guidance. There is always room for improvement, but my granddaughter will love this gift none the less! :)

My reference photo