Posts by: Rica Espiritu

This is a second painting of Bastian taken from one photo. The challenge this painting gave was that half of the face was dark and in shadows. Yes, I still need practise but I think this is better than the first one [below]. This was the first one painted last December. One of the things I learned was to keep on...

Yes, this is a fan art. 🙂  A watercolor portrait of Benedict Cumberbatch – a very late Christmas gift for an old friend. This has always been a problem for me – that is painting a face wherein half would be in shadows. I realized that even if ‘half’ of the face is in shadows – one should still show the features. Yes, I...

Rappler was able to take a beautiful picture of Pope Francis during that rainy Sunday before his last mass at Luneta. I wanted to see if I could capture the happiness of the photo. It was an image I wanted to remember.   I also tried something different with this painting. Instead of premixing colors on the palette,...

How do you paint a white cat? Until I actually get to learn how to do it (aside from merely painting the fur 50 shades of gray 😀 ), I will try to find creative ways of depicting them in pet portraits. For this I decided to just concentrate on the features and the dark area of the photo. This is the original photo. I...

Yes! Finally I’ve created 50 portraits. I hope to finish all 100 portraits by February so I can move on to other subjects – like urban and landscape painting or water. 🙂

After almost 3 weeks of doing online work, am finally happy to be able to hold the brush and paint again. I need more practise in doing children. I find children difficult to paint because they have less curves, corners and wrinkles – features that give people their own ‘character’.

I know one of these days I will need to learn how to do landscapes. In fact I might need to do it as I finish my 100 portraits.

“Please paint this for me.” Marianne said with that smile. How can I say no to the woman who I looked up to as a mother for more than 20 years? She sent me a thumbnail of this child bathing in a bucketful of water, her face lit up with joy. I searched for a higher resolution of the photo online and found out that it...

It feels like forever. I feel like I haven’t painted for decades. Clients have been piling on the work [since it is Christmas season] and now that I have the time, first thing I did was sleep. After 12 hours of sleep I’ve started to sketch and paint again. Here’s one.

My classmate’s precocious daughter. My first painting after almost 3 weeks of juggling deadlines. This was rendered from a photo taken by the talented Jane Pinney-Olsen.

I’ve always believed everyone has a story to tell. All one has to do is pay attention and listen. Christine’s story is the stuff bestsellers are made of. Gut wrenching darkness, wry humor and with a strong heroine to match. Yes, she is an inspiration.

I guess tragedies are a perfect motivator. My father-in-law died last Monday. We were looking for a pic of him to be placed beside his ashes. I realized that we never really took a high resolution pic of him. Rather, I was never able to take a good pic of him while he lived [something I plan to change from...

A blogger messaged me, asking me to do a portrait. A portrait of a boy, who died last August. Her son’s best friend. He was 17-years-old and was swimming in the river with his friends. He slipped under the water and never resurfaced. My friend showed me a couple of tribute videos and one happened to be the 911 call....

Yes he inspires me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’ve been wanting to paint him for quite some time. I’ve collected pics of him. Then I found a pic of him waving to the crowd. He had that smile. The smile that mirrored the love that he felt – I knew I had to do it. So I took my pencil and...

I was fortunate to have eaten at her place early this year. Her house is on a hill and from her backyard, this is what you could see: In fact the view is so beautiful that she decided to put an old bench. This way her friends and guests could enjoy a cup of hot coffee [or tea] while viewing the hills of Baguio – that...