"A Portrait is a painting in which something is always wrong with the mouth" - John Singer Sargeant

The above quote is by one of the greatest portrait painters - ever. Kind of describes my work sometimes.

Lots of artists consider portraiture to be a "sellout". Personally, I don't care, you can find an artist out there who will consider ANY money-making activity involving art to be selling out. I do portraits because I'm good at them, because there's a demand for them, because they seem to be a dying breed, and most importantly - because I enjoy doing them. I love photography, but there's something about an artist's portrait that captures what a photograph never can - personality, charisma, and inner qualities that can't be summed up in a split-second exposure onto a photographic plate. I got into it rather oddly - my grandmother (my primary art teacher) hasn't ever really done portraiture, and I considered portraits to be out of range of my talents and education. When I was in the 8th grade, I was given a sketchbook and a subscription to Rolling Stone Magazine for Christmas. On a lark, I drew a few portraits based off of covers from Rolling Stone in pencil. It was 1994, and Kurt Cobain's suicide and the "fall of grunge" (or whatever it was called) called for dark, black and white portraits and photojournalistic styles. I discovered that I could pick up and translate value and shape well, and honed my drawing skills doing portraits throughout high school and college. I'm sure my mom still has those old drawings, the only ones I can remember now are that of Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, River Phoenix and Jim Morrison...man, teenage angst at its finest.

Since then, I've branched out a little, incorporating those portraiture skills into other media, namely pastels and charcoal. While I love my "other stuff" - what might be on the Fine Art side of my work - I genuinely like doing portraits, especially of children. I had my own portrait done twice growing up, and I'm fascinated by portraits by other artists - the aforementioned Sargeant, Andrew Wyeth's Helga Pictures, Jamie Wyeth's incredible depictions of Rudolf Nureyev, even Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych - actually meant as a statement of mass-produced art - they all kind of speak of the subject, the artist and the viewer, all at once. Only the very best photographers can ever hope to accomplish this.

For all that I love it, however...it's a stressful part of my work. Parents and subjects know themselves and their children better than I ever will, and people paying for commissions have a tendency to think that the subject is....shall I say...better-looking...than an artist may depict. One of the reasons I love what I do is that it's very difficult for someone to say that my work is "wrong" or "bad" - critique is possible, but an artist who knows the rules breaks them with beauty. I can't really push that boundary with portraits. It either says "hey, that's Junior!" or it doesn't. I have never had a commission fall through for this reason, but it's stressful. Furthermore, traditional portraiture, in many ways, is a dying art. With simple photo editing software, one can create an artistically-styled photograph, complete with digitized brushstrokes and everything. I, and usually everyone else, can spot this kind of "portrait" a mile away, but it gets a little frustrating when clients will say "I want you to do it exactly like this picture here". Doing portraits from photographs alone is difficult, at best, and the artist is almost never satisfied. Andrew Wyeth, arguably the greatest living American painter, turned down Jackie Kennedy's request to create a posthumous portrait of the late John F Kennedy for this very reason. When his son, Jamie, was offered the job, Andrew cautioned him against it. Later, the elder Wyeth turned down an enormous sum of money when he declined to paint a portrait of Michael Jackson - simply because Jackson wasn't available for adequate sittings.

I wish I could have the ability to take this kind of stand, but...the Colonel needs to get fed, and bills have to get paid. So, on occasion, I will accept photograph-only assignments and commissions. I'm trying to improve my work done through photographs, so I've accepted two from college friends of mine.

My first is of Caroline, my friend Meghan's lovely tow-headed daughter. Quite the little diva, according to Meghan. I lived with Meghan for a year in college and we're still quite close - but Caroline's going on 3 years old and I've never met the child. I know, I'm a bad friend, but I've been living up North. I told Meghan I'd do Caroline's portrait way too long ago - so long I'm kind of embarrassed at how long it's taken. Work got in the way, blah blah blah. It's my gift to her, so I figure I can spend a little longer.

Here was my first attempt:



It was all right. The proportion was a little off, but that's pretty easy to correct. My problems lay in the fact that I should have used a bigger piece of paper to ensure correct composition in a frame, I needed to use better materials, and (here's the big one) - Caroline's a little too young here. Babies are great, but artistically speaking, they start looking like themselves somewhere around 2 years old at the earliest. This is still on my studio wall, though. It's all right I suppose.

My second attempt:

I'm not even going to show it, I am having camera battery issues, to say the least.

This was intended to be a pretty quick sketch, then Oprah sucked me in and I did this for a couple hours in front of the TV. I used the wrong paper here - as children have a "softer" look to their features, I needed a smoother paper. As a result, I couldn't pick up enough of the red in her mouth when I came back over it to blend and lift color. Not my favorite, I hate people even looking at this one.

Now I'm starting over from scratch. She's a little older and a little bit easier to pick her out of a crowd.

Here's the initial sketch:



Fear not, Meghan. It's just a base, it never looks like your kid at this point. Done with vine charcoal on Mes-Teintes Canson Paper, which is seemingly getting more expensive by the day. The shadow in the corner is my morning coffee, which surprisingly managed to keep itself off my work this time. I worked on it for a bit today and put it up when I got stuck. Part of the job is knowing when to walk away from the table for a bit. Kenny Rogers' The Gambler, as related to art...my friend Maverick swears that the answers to all of life can be found in that song, and I agree. It's very Taoist if you look at it.

I'm also working on a sanguine/red chalk and sepia portrait of Shaye's daughter Neely. Another tow-headed, bow-headed, all-around cute little kid. Shaye was nice enough to just give me the login and password to her snapfish account for finding reference photographs, which Neely seems to love posing for. My mom WAS a photographer, and I think most of the pictures of us have one or more of us looking pissed off about getting our picture taken. Sometimes I feel like calling my mom and apologizing for being such a pain in the keester.

But at any rate, this is what I have so far of Neely. I'm a little stuck on what to do with the background. If I can find some decent paper, I'm going to scrap it and try something new involving staining the paper with coffee or tea. Kind of a risk - the acidity in them will degrade the paper over time. But I figure it's worth a shot and I can let the archivists figure out what to do with my work when I'm gone.




I'm obviously still working on her face, homegirl doesn't really look like a China Doll. Comments and critique are welcome...after a scathing review of my portfolio this past winter, nothing hurts my feelings anymore.

PS: I would post reference photos as well, but don't feel that it would be appropriate. They're not my kids, after all.