Monday 27 August 2007

Painting - on not giving up the day job (yet)

Browsing around, I discovered that if you go to a blogger's profile and click on the things they put down as 'interests' it takes you to pages of people who share similar interests. Given that one of mine is (allegedly) painting, I thought I'd better post one, just to prove it.


This is a portrait I'm currently working on, of a friend of mine called Maria. Click on it to make it bigger. In my defence, I'd say it isn't helped by the camera which has given it some noticeable 'pincushion' distortion (when this happens, the middle of the picture bulges towards you).

Anyone who has tried it will also admit that portraiture is probably one of the greatest challenges to a painter. Still, it is going OK and, most importantly, she likes it! (Well, she says she likes it.)

For anyone interested, it is oil on canvas, and is 24" x 28". I should add it is from life, not from a photo. I refuse to paint from photos these days.

Please do not comment on this painting unless you're going to say really nice things, as we artists are sensitive people!

No comments will be posted without a full name and location, see the policy .

3 comments:

  1. I know you asked for only nice comments, but, hey, you've put yourself out there, so, you have to take what comes.
    a) you're a really crap painter

    but

    b) you should give up the day job anyway, because you're even worse at that.

    hope that's helpful.

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  2. Normally I wouldn't publish an anonymous comment (see the policy), but this is really quite funny!

    Like Anonymous says, sometimes you have to take the rough with the smooth. If it's the same Anonymous that's been trying to get posted here for some time, "Hey, you finally made it!"

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  3. Actually, John, I think the portrait is pretty good. You've clearly got talent - if I remember correctly, you used to have some photographs you'd taken on the site and they also evidenced an artistic eye.

    If your sensibilities are feeling particularly fragile, I can recommend Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way: a course in discovering and recovering your creative self". This putative writer found it very helpful.

    ReplyDelete