Something to sink my teeth into
As complicated as mouths are to paint, part the lips and the problem is only intensified. Teeth are best hidden if you’re unsure of how to tackle them. Nothing will make a painting look strained like a toothy mouth poorly painted.
The difficulty with teeth in a painting stems from the fact that most of us don’t have our teeth showing all the time. A forever-toothy face can be disconcerting minute after minute, day after day, immortalized in a painting. The logic goes back to the careful choosing of a source image in order to avoid completed expressions. A big smile (for example) may end up looking forced simply because such an expression tends to be unnatural if sustained on a live face. Even if the painting’s big smile is painted in a vivacious manner, it can lose out to the audience’s innate face-reading abilities. After all, a portrait’s success relies as much on the way it’s perceived by the people who live with it as it does on the artist’s hands and eyes.
I’m not saying that teeth should be kept hidden (and certainly not if it’s just a bit of teeth suggested), but I do think that they should be used sparingly and with a sense of purpose. Teeth have more meaning than we’d like to believe. They’re an integral part of expressing disdain or open-mouthed wonder, happiness and elation or simply breath. There’s a distinct lack of self-consciousness—a special kind of confidence—in teeth that are revealed.
This is the source image for the mouth in this portrait.
The first rule of teeth is that they are never fully white, though they may start out that way in the first layers of the portrait.
There’s always some modulation of light that makes even the whitest teeth slightly grey or even brown.
The second—and maybe less obvious—rule of teeth is that defining them too well will make a painting fail.
If each tooth is picked out too carefully, the subject will end up looking like she-he has a mouth full of chiclets!
Then again, without any definition the teeth look unfinished or, worse, like a boxer’s mouth guard!
I’ve found that, more often than not, the teeth in a portrait are the last element I focus on.
As this series of process shots proves, the teeth in my paintings tend to change less during the making of the painting than everything around them.
detail image of Ellis Island Pilgrim (Bosnian-American)
I subscribe to a more-is-less philosophy when it comes to all things dental in a portrait. It’s the only way I know to avoid unnatural toothiness in a painted portrait.
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CATEGORIES: - Process images - Practice - On portraiture -
