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Painting pets at Hunt Library

Painting pets at Hunt Library

Nancy Roman explained how to trace the image of a pet before making a watercolor portrait.

Patrick L. Sullivan

FALLS VILLAGE — Nancy Roman, an artist and educator, led a watercolor workshop at the David M. Hunt Library Saturday morning, Sept. 21.

It was a little unusual, in that the idea was for children (mostly) to work from a photo of their pet to make a watercolor portrait.

Roman, from Litchfield, summed up the process. Starting with a small (say five inches by seven inches) photo, the artists trace the pet’s face from the photo.

Using the tracing, they then create the watercolor.

Tzuf Siller of Falls Village came up with this portrait.Patrick L. Sullivan

Roman said she observes closely, offering a tip here, a suggestion there.

But she nevers touches the work in progress.

“That way they do it all themselves.”

The first step was technical. Several of the children and mothers had biggish photos (eight by 10 inches) printed on copier paper, and these needed to be reduced. The Hunt’s Brittany Spear-Baron handled that chore with the library’s copier.

For those who only had electronic images, Spear-Baron printed them out.

The workshop took about 90 minutes, and by the end, everyone had a good result.

Patrick L. Sullivan
Senior Reporter
Patrick Sullivan has been a reporter for The Lakeville Journal since 2004, covering everything from town meetings to local characters and the outdoors. He grew up in Northern Virginia but spent summers on Mount Riga in Salisbury, giving him a lifelong connection to the Northwest Corner. A graduate of Denison University, Patrick is also the author of Tangled Lines, the newspapers’ popular fly-fishing column—making The Lakeville Journal, as far as anyone knows, the only newspaper in Connecticut with a regular fly-fishing columnist. He once received a fan letter from England, which he considers sufficient evidence that his work has achieved international acclaim.
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