"Brothers and Sisters" (Portrait as of May 24, 2025)

Here is the portrait I am working on as it looked on May 24th.  I continued to work on the positions and proportions of these four little kids.  I had been struggling with the position of the feet, but found a secret weapon.  In my reference photo, the kids are standing on a surface of rectangular pavers, which provided a grid for me!  So I got out my protractor, checked the angles in the reference photo, and then tried to reproduce those angles on the canvas.  This sounds like a strange way to begin a portrait, but it was really helpful.

PS. If you look closely, you can see a number written on each figure: that's the child's age.  I want to keep that in mind because proportions change as children grow.