David is always giving me feedback about my work, usually commenting on composition and color choices, but also helping me to get out of my own head by pointing out issues I may be having an individual’s likeness. Of course, when it’s his face I’m working on, he’s particularly involved--a person’s image has a way of getting her-his special attention. My partner doesn’t think I’ve ever quite mastered his nose.
In this, my first portrait of my sweetheart, I can see what he means: the nose I painted has ski-jump feel, nothing like the comparatively pointier look his nose actually has.
And, in this, my second portrait of David, I still hadn’t completely figured out his nose, but, unlike my partner, I’m not convinced that it matters all that much. A nose usually does not serve an expressive purpose in a portrait--and by that I mean that, while the artist can be expressive in the painting the shapes and lines of the nose, the sitter can’t alter her-his expression with her-his nose. Unless the nostrils are flared, the nose’s only function is as an anchor around which to build the face.
To my mind, the main ingredient of a person’s likeness is her-his breath or movement. A portrait’s success is in its ability to capture the dynamism specific to a subject rather than her-his particular features. In this portrait, my third painting of David from around the same time as the first two, I feel like I’ve finally touched on something important about who he is, but it could be argued that this painting contains the least faithful reproduction of his nose to this point!
Profiles have a special way of calling an artist out about exact likeness. If a portrait is evaluated solely in terms of features accurately reproduced, the most recognizable image of an individual is actually her-his profile (it’s for this reason that profiles are used on coins and in mug shots).
In this 2007 portrait of David, I’d had a bit more practice with my sweetheart’s face, but I was still not quite copying his nose. However, without the source image to reveal every detail I overlooked in my painting, the portrait as a whole conveys his personhood.
In this portrait, created in early 2006, just a few months after the first three, I was already getting more of a handle on David’s face. The painting’s nose is still a little upturned, but the spacing of the David’s features is close to perfect, and this is crucial. After breath and movement, the relationship of the individual features is the most important ingredient to a likeness.
In fact, that’s how the nose plays its role in likeness. It is a focal point of the face purely by reason of its location, and that’s also why it is a good place to start building a portrait. If an artist can capture the angle and general shape of the nose, the rest of the face will follow easily, no matter its orientation or expression.
In this detail image of a series of portraits of David, my partner’s face is in profile but also viewed slightly from below. The nose in my portrait is, again, not an exact reproduction of the source image, but it does its job in revealing the position of the face in relation to the viewer.
This portrait is part of the same series of portraits as the one above. Looking at it along with the juxtapositions of other painting details and their source images, it becomes clear how far I often stray from the “reality” of the photographs. But then it’s the prerogative of the painted portrait to exchange a hard and fast nose for a collection of layered brushstrokes which evoke more than they represent.