100 portraits-Furqan's First

I started painting children's portraits about two years ago. I was having a conversation with my friend Krea, a fellow parent and vocal activist. I was telling her about my story and she was very supportive saying that I should find a way to connect with more parents to tell them about it. She suggested doing portraits of kids. I'd never really thought of that before but I did one of my son as a test painting of my son and he and I both liked it.

I made a video about it and showed it to folks on the social networks, and immediately parents started asking me to paint their child! I never had an experience that was so fast to connect with parents.

Originally I thought I might do murals in children's rooms (which I still may do), but that proved to be more expensive and time consuming. Take a look at some of my recent portraits and check out this tag for more photos of the process of painting these. Each one is painted by hand from photo references with the child's favorite colors, ethnicity, or nationality in mind.

Thank you to Nikki for being my first parent and for spreading the word, and thank you to all my moms and dads who've helped me get closer to my goal of 100 portraits by commissioning one of your child. There are about 32 portraits now and about 11 people have pledged for new ones, so that leaves about 19 portraits left.

This may be my last or close to last post on the Furqan's First campaign (for now); please share this one with any folks who are looking for a children's portrait as a gift for a grandparent or new parent. They can get the book, a hand-painted portrait of a child, and a few other goodies.

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Lastly, I've begun the tedious but exciting work of contacting book stores here in the Bay Area and across the US like Marcus Bookstore or Blue Stockings (NYC). I've started with some African American, Latino, and left-leaning stores, and I could use your help with recommendations for your favorite book stores. Some stores I've spoken to actually purchase books through Kickstarter campaigns as well, so if you know of any cultural centers or book stores in your city (anywhere), please ask them to pledge. Let them know there are only 7 days left in the campaign. If they do not purchase books through crowd funding sites, please email me your favorites! I'll contact them shortly afterwards.

 

Thank you all again, and stay tuned.

- Rob ( info@robdontstop.com )

If you are reading this and have not heard, several weeks ago I launched my first children's book through kickstarter. We surpassed our initial goal and are pushing for several cool stretch goals. Visithttp://bit.ly/FurqansFirst to see and share it. Thank You!