Family Photos of 2012

We try to take a family portrait each year, but as a photographer, I’m always challenged with how to accomplish this task.  I’ve recruited friends or family members to ‘push the button’.  I’ve set up a tripod and run to get in place.  This year, I recruited the help of my friend Alicia Zinn, a fellow photographer and owner of In His Eyes Photography, to tackle the task of our family photo.  We had this crazy idea of doing a family painting and she was game for the mess   I’m so glad we decided to do it because we had a BLAST!  I never once had to say “Smile”.  Our kids loved the project and we got some pretty sweet photos out of the deal.  Plus, we made a lasting family memory with a painting that we will be adding to our wall.  Thank you, Alicia, for capturing the essence of our family!

Hope you enjoy the pictures!  I’ll post the details of the shoot at the bottom so you can do this with your own family if you would like.

The first strokes of paint made by the youngest in our family.

We had to have a lesson in slinging paint, but once they got it they were all in.

Love those brown eyes….

She wasn’t certain what was going on, but she liked it.

My gentle hubs…

Laughing at painting me instead of the canvas.

Got daddy too.

She tried to get it off her back. Haha!

I love this face!  Sheer joy!

The paint started to run so we laid it on the ground and went all out.

Paint wars…

She felt the need to clean up.

There was so much paint on the canvas (I think we used 16 bottles of paint), so I decided to try and sling some of it off by spinning.  It turned out pretty neat!

The hubs got me right across the face.

Examining our results.

The wall hanger

So we used a 24×36 canvas on an easel.  Alicia brought 16 bottles of tempera paint so we would be able to wash it out of our clothes.  Some of the paint she put into baby food jars so we could dip our brushes in.  We taped off the word ‘one’ with painters tape before we began.  You could choose any word… love is a good one for this project too.  The paint came out of our jeans but stained our white tshirts, so you probably want to wear a shirt that you can throw away afterwards.

I’ll be posting what we did with the painting in a follow up post.  For now, here is a supply list if you would like to do this with your own family.

24×36 canvas

Easel

brightly colored tempera paint

painters tape

paper towels

paint brushes

jugs of water

white tshirts

Hope you enjoy!