It's frustrating to know that it's all been done before.
My high school painting teacher specialized in teaching us how to paint portraits.
He would always take photos of us and kepts them....so there were boxes upon boxes of interesting faces just sitting there to be painted.
He also stressed the importance of working from models and mirrors.
As a started to grow artisticly I started to understand the need to paint my own subjects and set my own compositions. Find Content unique to me.
I took this to mean ...don't just paint a portrait....have it be more than that. If I paint from a model it has to have greater purpose. ...No I'm not painting Danielle, I'm painting Franchesca....figure as symbol.
But I admit that I have a great deal of success when painting portraits, and tonight as I was working on my painting of carrie I started wondering if I really should be a portrait painter.
Not that it's nessicarily bad to be a portrait painter...Vermeer painted portraits, Van Gogh, Di Vinci, Warhol, and of course the brillent Alice Neel whose work is dipected above...
There have been notible portrait artist for each generation....it is acceptable...the point being, that whenever I paint a portrait I've always thought of it as copping out...alteast since I started really thinking about what I paint....who I don't know what to say, so I'll just paint a pretty picture of a friend of mine.
But ...in truth, that's not what I'm doing. ..I have this way of capturing people...no they aren't incredibly realistic, they are rather exagerated. ....exagerated eyes, and lips and what not....but some how the piece steals a piece of their essance.
maybe they are much more than I give them credit for.
But I'd hate to have people say I'm just ripping off Alice Neel.
4:00 a.m. - June 13, 2005
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Fantasy is sometimes better than reality. - July 24, 2008
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