You Only Hurt The Ones You Love

The Bloggist

John Singer Sargent said this about portraits; "The definition of a portrait is a picture of someone whose mouth isn't quite right."

 

I remember when I opened up my very first starter kit of oil paints.  It had six tiny tubes of paint, a 3X6 inch coated cardboard palette, a small bottle of linseed oil and another of turpentine, and two bristle brushes (one of which I still have thirty five years later.)  But no instructions!  What was I supposed to do with this crap?  How was I supposed to learn to paint if no one was going to tell me?  Printed on the back of the box was a cryptic blurb about discovering the joys of painting-- blah, blah, blah.  But it did say that if you mixed Burnt Sienna and Titanium White together you get a lovely "flesh" tone.

So I did portraits.

Over the years I've done a ton of them.  I've painted friends, brides, grooms and family.  Some for free, and some for a fee.  Some I wish I had another crack at.  Others, I'm sure, the owner's wish they had picked a different artist to do them.  Fair enough.  There was even a couple that I thought I did okay.  But I keep trying.  Like all paintings, you never know when one is actually going to come out great.  It's just like Hide-And-Go-Seek.

My poor family has faired the worst, in their opinion.  I did portraits of both of my children about a dozen years ago.  Starting with my son Tom:

The photo I used for this was when Tom was about five years old, but I painted this when he was nine.  Everybody said I made him look too old.  "Just wait," I said  "he'll look this old eventually."  So what if it took another five years...

Since I did this to Tom, the next year I painted his older sister Leigh:

She was thirteen, and yeah, everyone said I made her look too old.  I do remember trying to down-play the hardware she had on her teeth.  She wasn't thrilled I showed her braces to begin with.  Ten years later I did another portrait of her.

"Thanks for the green spot in my hair, Dad" was Leigh's comment on this, (apparently, I still have some underpainting showing through,) "and do I really look that old?" 

But then I thought I'd give Tom another try.  Here is the lad at nineteen:

"Geez Dad,  you made me looked pissed off!"  Or so thought Tom.  He was nineteen, and he looked like this all the time.  I thought I got his demeanor nicely.  However, I promised to make him look more pleasant the next time I paint him.


I got it in me to try another one recently, so I went after my beautiful partner Ellen.  Now really, Ellen is a lovely woman.  But she rather dislikes what I did to her.  

"I like what you tried to do," she said to me "but don't you think there's something a little wrong with the mouth?"

John Singer Sargent would have known exactly what she was saying...

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