Shawn did not commission me to paint her portrait: her husband did.
Often times, a client wishes to surprise someone special with a completed portrait of them. Many portraitists happily work from the photographs a client provides to paint a portrait, but I do not.
It isn't that I don't love being part of a surprise. It's that I want to make the best portrait possible, and, in order to do so, I must meet the subject. My work is not about the likeness captured in a person's features, but in their way of being and moving. To be able to put that down on the canvas, I need to have been in the same room with it first.
Besides, the portrait itself is a surprise anyway, whether or not a subject knows it's coming!
