Portrait Miniature for Nikko Hurtado

As you all know, last year I got tattooed by Nikko Hurtado... Whilst being inked I made him a promise, that as a thank you I would paint a portrait miniature for him... I asked who he would like me to paint and he just said 'awww I duno dude?!'. 

With no exact subject matter, I decided to try and find an image that would: 1. Surprise him, and 2. Be personal... With that I found the perfect image of his son...

Its fun and quirky... plus, it's not a typical portrait shot, but I thought it was brilliant and would make Nikko laugh :)

Miniature painting is made up of hundreds upon hundreds of tiny dots... it takes time, precision and attention to fine detail.  If you click on the last image of this blog entry, you can see all the dots and how the image is made up.
I've said before that I like to paint images that are NOT traditional poses for portraits, I like unusual and amusing images (like the one I painted previously of Dasha and I).

Here are the images in progress...

5cm round, watercolours with '00000' size brush (around 10 hairs)

I wish I had started scanning this in sooner, but I get so nervous when I start a portrait, that it won't work the way I want, I won't get the eyes right, are the colours correct? etc... I was so nervous creating this portrait as I admire Nikko's portraits so much, I didn't want to disappoint... SO MUCH PRESSURE!!

The painting is not exactly like the photo, but as close too... (PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGES TO VIEW FULL SIZE!) I wanted it bright and 'alert' the colours to pop and for it to be a bold image, all of which I think I achieved.

This was the mount, then framed in an ornate black frame.

When I gave the portrait to Nikko, I was so nervous!  He took one look at it, laughed and said 'Dude, no way!!'  I think that was a good thing? Haha.  He seemed very surprised that I had painted the miniature for him, but I loved painting this image and hope he enjoys it for years to come... Like I will, with the beautiful tattoo that he done for me :)  This was the least I could do.  As I admire his portrait tattoos and paintings, he is a great role model of mine within the art world.

I hope you like it Nikko!