Freedom to Dance

When I am not painting I love ballroom dancing with my wife. When we first got started 8 years ago our teacher, Teddie, took us to a dance competition near Gatwick - Freedom to Dance. My wife took some amazing pictures at the event and I decided to do a painting from one of them as a present for our dancing friends Jane & Trevor.

I used a standard canvas from Hobbycraft and after laying down a rough background in acrylics, I sketched the couple in using water colour pencils as these would wash off once I started painting.

Then th efun started as everything about this work was unfamiliar to me, - painting people, especially faces and hands and getting the ladies dress to flow. It was also getting dark and even with a daylight led lamp getting skin tone right was hard - I went from zombies to fake tan and all shades in between

I was also working form a photo where the ladies foot was not in shot so I had to work out where it should be - after three goes I started again by getting my dance teacher to show us where her foot should be and then getting my wife pose for me in the same way.

I’d also add that in competition ladies dress are an odd, shorter length so that judges can see their feet, and to avoid getting shoes being caught etc. However I wanted to make the dress longer and more elegant and try and suggest some movement with a looser treatment of the petticoat

Job done I thought, but no I had some issues with the varnish I used and it made the background all cloudy where acrylic varnish is milky and should dry clear. So another half a day of fixing that and here is the result

Alex Gunnarsson and Liis End sadly no longer dancing together but for me a perfect hold evocative of a more sophisticated era