Before my grandparents left for India, I really wanted to make them something. I'm not fluent in Hindi so communicating with them throughout the duration of their stay with us was very difficult, but I still wanted to show how much I appreciated them... so I painted them. I did finish in time, however India's weather isn't really great for paint so we ended up giving them a print and keeping the original. 

As I began sketching this out I was reminded of my past experiences with realism: they weren't great. I was so stressed about making it perfectly accurate until I realized that it really didn't need to be. I began adding my own little touches to the painting and I really like how my grandparents ended up looking in it.

The way I went about painting it was very new to be- I used the acrylics kind of like watercolors- basically I layered the colors hoping for a softer, more homey feel. I really like how it turned out.

However, I'm very unhappy with the background and the hand. I'm considering just getting rid of the hand because it looks so awkward or just maybe tweaking it a little. As for the background, I feel like it's too plain? I didn't want it to be very complex- I wanted it to be a solid color (with maybe some patchiness to make it a little bit more interesting) but I feel like I didn't pick the right color.