This watercolor painting is one of a series commissioned by the adoptive U.S.parents of this child from Africa. Painting is 12 X 15 inches and matted to 15.75 X 18.75 in acid free matt and backer board covered with Museum grade acrylic

The secret is in the eyes.

All of the details of a portrait are important. Weathered lines caused by age, a playful or determined expression, the shape and curve of the face — each helps tell the story of the subject and the painting.

But when artist Teresa Altemeyer sits down to painstakingly create a portrait, the most time is spent on their eyes.

“As they always say, eyes are the window to the soul,” she said. “I very much concentrate and spend a lot of time on the eyes. I’m a slow painter; some of my paintings easily took 60 hours to paint because of the detail.”

Altemeyer has found tremendous success with her devoted, detail-oriented portraits. She has won numerous awards for her work, and her most recent series of 23 portraits featuring subjects at Conner Prairie was so well received that the museum acquired 15 of the paintings for its permanent collection.

Teresa only started using watercolor after developing a server allergic reaction to oil paints. She had to completely reverse engineer her painting starting with the light colors and finishing with the dark, exactly opposite of oil paint. Watercolor is also pretty unforgiving.