It’s a running joke in our house that I can’t ever quite capture my partner’s nose in my portraits of him. And, while there’s some truth to it, reproducing David’s nose (or, for that matter, anyone’s nose) precisely in a portrait is not that important to creating an arresting likeness.
I have to agree with Chris Haberman: that’s the only way to make a painting.
How the size of a person’s pupil can make her-him more or less attractive.
Being mostly unseen means being largely uncelebrated for a couple of American icons.
This portrait bag only took a few months to create. It’s what it represents that’s been 160 years in the making…
I live with a lot of faces--a function of working towards painting every person’s portrait in the whole world! I like being surrounded by my paintings: there’s something comforting in the faces themselves. It’s like my friends are always around, encouraging and reassuring me. As it turns out, I’m not just being eccentric when I say that painted faces have a real effect on me. A team of psychologists at the University of Newcastle has given scientific weight to my musings.
Certain expressions are better for portraits than others. In choosing a source photo from which to work, it’s crucial to think of the subject’s character and what you want to say about her-him, but it’s equally important to pick an expression that will work well in paint.
It’s impossible to divorce a person from her-his face. More than any other physical feature, a person’s visage comes to represent her-him as well as everything she-he believed in and stood for. In that way, portraits have a certain extra power. More than just the expression of the artist, a likeness wields the full force of the subject’s character. And that’s why some people find this portrait so utterly repulsive.
...because it doesn’t hurt to have the tables turned once in a while. Portland improv group Super Project Lab did it to me live on stage at the Winningstad last night.
It may seem like I have a one-track mind (because I only paint portraits), but I’m not as focused as all that. I’m not, for example, the kind of artist who can work on just one painting at a time. At any given moment, my studio has to be full of half-made faces or I can’t paint.
Artist Geoffrey Raymond turns portraits into a platform for comment and captures a moment in history.
On the wrong way to build a reputation as a portraitist and the only real way to be a successful artist.