Sorry, I don't know what the current politically correct term is, but I wanted to address these two subjects in portraits.
I've had people ask me if anything is done differently for African American portraits. Short answer...No. The identifying features of any portrait is their features, not their skin color. Sure, if you want to you can lightly stain the wood except the eyes and teeth, but have faith in your work and it's clarity of the subject's uniqueness. (I think that's a word).
Babies are a little different. No other way to say it except it is a gamble and up to you (or the customer). The reason why is that in most portraits age is shown in shadow, wrinkles, etc. Well, babies can still have that "baby fat" and create lines under the eyes, lines on either side of the mouth, etc. I don't have any advice on this because there are times I use those shadows and times I don't. If doing this for a customer, let them know of that gamble and that it is up to them whether or not to include such details. That usually means doing 2 patterns for them to choose from. The gamble on whether or not to use shadows and lines is usually only a gamble on the face.
