"The Art of The Portrait Conference" - April 22-25. 2010

I've just gotten back from the PSOA's annual portrait conference in Reston, VA, and I feel excited and renewed as an artist - ready to dive back in to the difficult challenges of painting portraits! There was such an amazing energy there all weekend, as hundreds of artists congregated in one place and talked about the one thing they all had in common: that one thing which drives us all. It's that beautiful obsession with skin tones and shapes and relationships between values and colors. It's our inward desire to create impressions of the beauty that surrounds us. We can't live without it, and yet we struggle with its complexities and our own limitations. Being a portrait artist is an amazing calling!

In my latest newsletter, I talked about portfolios and how having a clean, professional and beautiful presentation has been a big step towards gaining credibility and recognition in the art world (hence, the honorable mention in the PSOA portfolio competition - this is huge for me!).

Here are a few of the other wonderful things I gleaned from this year's conference:

• The secret to growing as an artist is painting from life
• Think about sculpting the whole time - what is the structure underneath it all? Think about effect - what are the key descriptives of the form? Think about interpretation - what feels right?
• If you're having trouble getting started, just go for it and let yourself make some mistakes so you can fix them. Key words: Inspiration, Persperation, Determination, ATTITUDE
• Find ways of acheiving something different - something that no one has ever seen before.
• Let yourself be a little uncomfortable - challenge yourself!
• Note on materials: Rose Frantzen used oil sticks to draw and block in masses at the start of her demo. I can't wait to give these a try!
• Why teach art? Because of the possibility of the experience - to help someone find the right question at the most useful time when painting.
• Feed active questioning about purpose, meaning, approach, etc. What is my ultimate question?
• Be around people who are passionate about painting.
• There is a heirarchy of intention. "Is what I'm about to do next going to take me closer to the direction I wish to go, or further away?" (Schmid)
• When it comes to having a good studio, there is no substitute for light and space. It's okay to have too much light because you can scale it back, but not enough light is going to be a problem.

One of my idols in the art world, Nancy Guzik, gave a generous amount of time to look at my portfolio and to talk with me about expression. She had so many words of encouragement, and it struck me when I mentioned something about edges (I guess I asked her something like, "How are you able to express so much through the use of soft edges?"), and she said, "Oh, that's just technique..." that I am finally starting to dig a little deeper as an artist. The expressiveness came to the painting not just through her use of brushwork and technique, but through her ultimate intention - she knew what she wanted to accomplish from the start of the painting, and the technique was simply her vocabulary. Nancy's work encompasses where I wish to be someday in my own work - her paintings express a kind of honest joy as she depicts women and children with great tenderness.

So where am I going with this? I have a goal for my own work - whether I'm doing commission work or paintings just for fun - my goal is to make every painting an expression of gratitude. Before now, I kept asking myself, "Is my work relevant?" because my whole life has been relatively easy. Now I'm realizing that you don't need to have a life full of pain and strife to create art that says something meaningful. Beauty in and of itself is a worthy aim. Further, my Christian calling comes to mind in the mindst of this internal questioning, and I realize every day how truly blessed I've been, my whole life. Therefore, it would be wrong of me to express anything but gratitude!

I am a young artist, but I do have a lot to say, and I think my message will be relevant, especially in a society that is weighed down by its own moral dissolution. This year's portrait conference was good for me, because it helped me to dig a little deeper. I'm ready to dive in!

P.S. Here is the one souvenir I picked up from the National Gallery of Art...now with my morning coffee in it. :-) It says, "I am still learning."

Finished Wedding Portrait

Over a year after their big event, I was recently able to finish my wedding gift for my twin sister Emily and her husband Blake. The reason for my delay? I was working from a black and white photo. I went through all of her wedding pictures and decided that this one was the best pose.  It was a great exercise for me - I used a few other color images to help me with color reference, but the best thing I did to overcome this challenge was to paint a head study of my sister from life. I'm fortunate enough to see her almost every week, as she too lives in the Dallas area (you can't keep twins apart for long!). Painting her from life sealed her skin tones, hair color, and expression into my memory, and I was able to get past some of the roadblocks and finish the portrait strong. Here it is:

Emily and Blake: March 20, 2009 - 18" x 24" - oil on linen

And a detail crop:

FAQs

I just returned from a wonderful 3-day event in Houston called the Bayou City Art Festival. I was one of 300 or so artists, and I was blown away by the variety and creativity that this festival offered. My work was some of the most traditional there, and I was perhaps the only portrait artist. I don't know how much longer I'll be doing art festivals (it's a bit stressful for me to travel with all those paintings!), but I always enjoy meeting so many interesting people at these kinds of events.

There are so many different artists at these big festivals (Bayou City is ranked 7th in the country) that I'm lucky if anyone spends more than a few seconds looking at the paintings in my booth. However, first impressions are important, and some of the questions people ask give me valuable insights as to how I can make my work easier to relate to. So today, I thought I would blog about some of the most common questions I get asked at art shows.

1. How long have you been painting? I've been painting for about 7 years, but drawing ever since I could pick up a pencil. I did a lot of colored pencil in high school and during college, and that was a great way to learn color theory before taking on the challenges of oil painting.

2. Do you take commissions? Yes! Commissioned portraits are my specialty! There are a number of things I like to paint, such as landscapes and still lives, but people still rank at the top of my list. I've never had an unhappy client - my portraits always look like the person they're supposed to look like!

3. How much would a comissioned painting this size (points to a random portrait) cost? First of all, I believe that everyone deserves a chance to be commemorated in a work of art, and quality portraits should be affordable. I use the highest quality materials to withstand the test of time, so it should be understood that portraits cost money to make. They also take a lot of time. Therefore, my prices are based less on size and more on how much of the person is actually in the painting. Head studies start at $1000 for one person, and go up with the addition of hands or full-length poses (the size then increases by default). I charge slightly more for additional people in the portrait, but I also work closely with the client in determining a size they want for their home and where it will hang (i.e. bedroom, over fireplace, hallway, etc.), and I also do my best to work within your budget.

4. Do I send you a photo or do you work from life? I only work from a client's photos if the portrait is posthumous, or from an event or earlier stage in life (such as childhood past, or a wedding). The photos would need to be very high-quality, with good lighting and adequate contrast (no flash photography). I am completely capable of working either from photos or from life, but what I prefer to do is take my own reference photographs whenever possible. I am willing to travel within a 5-hour radius to do photo shoots on location. If painting an adult portrait, I prefer to start the portrait from life (1-2 hour sitting) and then finish it in my studio from reference photos, or do a color study / quick sketch from life and finish from photos. The reason for this is that photography, no matter how good, loses many of the subtleties in color, light and dark, that make a painted portrait so great. My goal is to make your portrait better than any photograph could ever be. 

5. How long does it take to paint a portrait? I work in layers, using classical techniques (more like the old masters and less like the contemporary "Alla Prima" painters, who can finish a painting in a day!). I like to let each layer dry before working on the next. Depending on the scale and complexity of the painting, I need at least two months to complete the portrait.

The Perfect Evening

Case in point: Lighting is detrimental to a painting's success.

I began this painting of my friend Susan last fall, and she would sit for me in the evenings, reading her book aloud while I worked.  Painting at night was both good and bad. It was good in that my studio, which lacks north lighting of any kind (north light is, of course, ideal!), was able to stay controlled with one light source as opposed to being bombarded by light coming in from all over the place through the windows. The bad part: I was literally painting in the dark! I had a small light to illuminate my canvas, but this caused issues with glare on the wet paint, so I had to move it back quite a way to see what I was doing.

I started the painting using a cool light, but decided it needed to look more natural and warm, like she was actually reading next to a lamp. So, after switching out the light (I didn't have a real lamp), I was much happier with the warm colors and deep shadows. Below: original lighting...

Here it is with the lighting I eventually switched to:

And the final painting, which you can find on my website with detail shots here: http://www.annas-blank-canvas.com/gallery/adultoilportraits/.

Updates

Wow, I can't believe my last blog post was over 2 weeks ago! Sorry about that...
I've been extremely busy, but I'm so grateful because it's the best kind of busy! I have several portrait commissions going, a show coming up in Houston in two weekends, and a gallery (Weiler House Fine Art) asking for more work! So...I'm spreading myself a bit thin these days but it's a good problem to have, and I'm sure my artist friends can all relate.

So, the big event coming up is Bayou City Art Festival in Houston on March 26-28. You can find out more from their website at http://www.bayoucityartfestival.com/. I'll be in booth 209; look for me if you happen to stop by!

New paintings (and finished versions of works in progress) will be up soon.