I wanted to do a sand painting of my grand-son Jaden. He was so cute then and he still is. He has a great personnality and I wanted to capture it.
The first thing I had to do is take pictures of him. Year of 2006, he was 3 or 4 years old at the time, and taking pictures of a little kid, sometimes it’s not so easy. But I had a lot of fun taking Jaden’s shots. He was very accomodating, of course it helps that he was already so used to have his pictures taken so often by his grand-ma, that those sessions, were nothing new for him.
I did take a lot of them and stopped until I knew I had found just the right one. On top of it, I wanted him to wear this outfit I had made for fun, and pretend he was a little boy that leaved in the time of Jesus.
See, I was right, he is so cute… but we were on a roll. He was willing to keep posing for me, so why not…had to take as many pictures as he would allowed me.
It looks like he was almost done…
We went outside. May be that was going to get him interested a little longer…
Just to look at him, warms my heart!
I can read that face…”grand-ma, aren’t you done yet? I wanna go play!” See if I can squeeze a few more shots from Jaden.
That was the last picture I was able to get out of him… I put the camera away. He took off those clothes as quickly as he could and with his sister, jumped in the hot tub.
Now the only thing left was for me to review all those pictures and pick one.
A lot of work has already been done. I had to do the drawing of Jaden on tracing paper, then transfer it to the polyphane paper that I use for the sand painting. I bring this special paper from Tahiti when I go there for vacation. It’s a very thick plastic with a sticky face. It is used also for lamp shades.
I always start with the eyes. The blades I use for it are the sharpest at the beginning of a project, and I need the eyes to be perfect. There is so many tiny, little details, that it’s easy to mess up. So, if I am already hours invested , and I mess up the eyes then, I have to throw away everything and start again all over.
There is Jaden’s picture near my working area. That’s the one I chose. The face is done. The handerchief, or whatever it is called is done also.
“Jaden” was done. It came together so easily, as if my hand was guided. It was the first time that I used a gradual shading. Sometimes, and this time it is one of those, I just knew that I had been the instrument…
I kept a list of the sands I used.
For the eyes, 5 different sands were used: the Phillipine, Ghana Africa, New-Caledonia isle de Lifou, Tiarei and Kauehi fromFrench-Polynesia.
For the skin, 4 types of other sands from 3 atolls of the Tuamotus and Tubuai were used.
For the clothes, I used 6 different kinds of sands: Tahiti, Marquises and Moorea.
And for the background: sands from Moorea, Tubuai, and Florida.
