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January 28, 2006
Painting portraits
I am listed in Yellow Pages under artists as a portrait painter.
Jane Fowler, oil on panel 460mm x 720mm
As a result I get phone calls from people wanting me to paint a picture of some relative from a photograph they took eight years ago while on holiday in Fuerteventura. From time to time the phone will ring…
“John Coombes, hello”
“You paint portraits?”
“ - Yes” I ANSWER WITH SOME HESITANCY
“Could you do a picture of our mother for her silver wedding?”
“Well, yes, but you have to understand – “
“From their wedding photograph?”
“Er.. no, I paint from life.”
“What?”
“I paint the person here in my studio or I can come to your home.”
AT THIS POINT THEY USUALLY HANG UP, BUT THE TENACIOUS ONES CONTINUE:
“How long does it take?”
“Usually around four months”
BRRRRRRRRR…
OR:
“How much does it cost?”
“Well a painting of a head and shoulders, for instance, will start at about £900.”
BRRRRRRRRRRRRR…
This is one reason they hang up:
from a site that offers “portraits” that will take up to eight hours and cost £67 for one person or pet and £92 for two people or pets. Just send them a photograph. They boast that “you cannot see a pencil line.” Heaven forbid.
Now this is all well and good, but they’re not “portraits”, they are copies of photographs. I suspect they enlarge the picture and change it to black and white, then just copy tone for tone. But they miss the point.
What they miss are the essential elements that distinguish us one from another. When I’m painting I can’t just copy what I see, because I’m looking at something in three dimensions, and my eyes cleverly interpret this in a way that doesn’t immediately lend itself to the two dimensions presented by the panel on the easel.
So, as I’ve mentioned before in these virtual pages, I use dastardly tricks to give the impression of form. But it’s knowing what bits of the face, what features, what nanometres of expression, to apply the tricks to. That and working over many sittings and getting to know the sitter in a way you just can’t from a photograph sent through the post.
Posted by john at January 28, 2006 09:44 PM