Portrait of My Dad on Holiday

Nik Courtney

It's become something of a tradition to draw my Dad on his birthday since I started doing it a few years ago.

I took the reference photo while we were on holiday in Turkey last summer. He'd bought that hat the night before, I helped him choose it, he looked so dapper in it, it really suited him. I think he felt a bit like Clint Eastwood in it!

The hat became a big feature of the holiday.....I have fond memories of him playing in the pool with my girl...she took his hat and put it on...it looked so funny as it was so big on her you couldn't see her face and it just looked like a hat floating on little legs in the water.

I chose to crop the portrait to a square and changed the whole angle of his head (he was originally looking down) as I really love all the triangles/diagonal lines in this arrangement, the stunning background of the Kalkan coastline works so well to unify the whole piece.

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