The Good in Goodbye

This was a very sensitive topic to illustrate--the West Virginia coal mine collapse in 2006. Martin Toler (in the yellow) wrote a comforting goodbye note to his family on the back of an insurance form before he died. Thank you to all those who were able to make it to the photo shoot for this! I was only able to find four models, one of them being my husband, so I repeated one model twice--see if you can tell which one he is!

This was a challenge to paint in watercolor, since my color scheme is usually light and colorful, and this was dark (coal mines are usually black) and gloomy. I was pleased I was able to pull it off and still preserve some color.