Michele Graybeal has always been fascinated by old photographs. She now has her father’s collection, including a few daguerreotypes. While many are studio portraits, “what grabbed my attention were the candid shots,” she says. “My dad, a consummate shutterbug, was a master at that. He’d catch a moment in time, rather than a superficial smile.”
These “real moments” inspired her to paint a series with the hope of evoking a feeling of nostalgia, beginning with A Family Gathering, based on one of her partner’s old family photos. “What struck me about this particular image is that in each face there is a story,” Graybeal says. She loves the body language in this image, the way the people are all crammed on one piece of furniture, physically close but “miles apart in their expressions.”
Graybeal used the graph method to transfer the image onto the canvas, mapping one square at a time. “This painting is more or less in sepia tone, so it was about getting the values correct,” she says. First, she painted the ground a medium value. Once this dried, she sketched the entire image in pencil. Then she painted in the darker values and gradually built up the shapes, adding volume and more detail, noting that the lightest values and highlights came last.
Though her day job has allowed her to explore character and story through visual development as a lead at Disney TVA and Skydance, she says: “In my paintings I can express myself on a deeper level with visual storytelling.”
Click on the images below to view Graybeal’s photograph-inspired art or visit her website.
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