Portraits and the Sitter

An issue facing every portrait painter is the acceptance by the sitter of the finished result.

A recent article in the New York Sun by the London Daily Telegraph writer Neil Tweedie neatly sums up this dilemma.

Tweedie outlines various past and recent, famous and less famous portrait painters who have faced this situation. For some the subject just destroyed the work so others should not see it. For others, they eventually learned to lived with the finished painting.

I have just received back a portrait painting that I gave to a couple to celebrate their wedding. The wife has requested that I rework her nose.

I have another portrait that hangs near my studio awaiting the sitter to return for a final sitting. In this case the sitter is embarrassed that I chose him as a subject and so far has not been brave enough to view the nearly completed work.

The dilemmas of a portrait painter.

My Website Updated.

Over the last few days I have reworked the galleries of my paintings on my website. Before I had them broken into just web pages of "Portraits," "Groups," and "Crowds." Also, the Menus were very brief and not too descriptive.

Now I have expanded the Menus. Hopefully they will lead a visitor to explore more fully the many things offered at the website. Also, the "Portraits" pages has been broken into "Male Portraits," "Female Portraits," and "Friends and Family" page sections. The "Friends and Family" pages are mostly paintings I given to, as it says, family and friends.

I will be watching the page statistics to see if visitors explore the website more deeply.

I Have Started Six New Paintings

Today I started work on six new small paintings. Five are 8 x 10 inch canvases for portraits of my five remaining grandchildren. The remaining one is an experimental miniature 2 x 1-1/2 inch canvas as a gift to a friend.

I purchased 10 of these miniature canvases at the recent Art Materials Show. They are so small that they will require a lot of manipulation with my tiniest 0000 size brushes.

To learn more on how I paint visit "On Painting Portraits" at my website.