Many moons ago, I commissioned a painting by Christina Wegman based on a photograph of my wife at age 13 when we were at summer church camp together:

Yesterday, Christina delivered the finished portrait and all I can say is “Wow!”  The painting is wonderful.  I’ll let Christina describe it in her own words:

My third recent commission was a portrait; Janeil [below] was based on a photo taken of my client Rick’s wife at camp in the 70’s.  I know that Janeil likes to work on scrapbooks and make greeting cards and that her favorite color is purple, so I tried to incorporate all of these things into the composition.  As with a portrait I completed last year of Eugene and Georgia Baxley, my main reference photo was a scanned image of a small family snapshot.  I had to use a few school portraits of Janeil as reference to get an adequate likeness.  I find portraits of this kind to be incredibly difficult to do well because the reference material is often blurry or discolored, but it is also incredibly rewarding to be able to bring a cherished but faded or blurry snapshot to life in this manner!

Some of the reference photos I gave Christina to help her fill in details: