Category: Creativity

When people get their picture taken they usually smile. Smile for the Camera!
When I paint a portrait I look for a non smiling face. Just a relaxed face that is not trying to look PRETTY.
I don’t know why we always have to look so pretty.
The face that I love the best is one that is looking right at me as though they are listening to me tell them something interesting,
I love a contemplative look.
I love to see the shape of your natural mouth and your eyes not all scrunched up in a giant smile.
Even if I am painting a baby I want to see just the whole face unadulterated.
Just you and nothing else added.
My husband is an expert at taking a picture that is the look I want. He knows me and what I am looking for. He can take a pure picture.
Most people have a hard time doing that. They pose and try and look in a fashionable sense but that is not what I want.
I just want to see you.
Your simple face is the most beautiful thing to me.
Every face is a beautiful thing to explore when you are a painter.
Two eyes a mouth and a nose. simple elegance.

I was thinking that there is something radically different about a painting of you than a photograph of you. A photograph captures a second in time. A painting captures the entire essence of you and is very timeless. Even a baby portrait will have all the face that is ever going to be there till the end of your life already visible.
At first I thought baby portraits were not going to be like that but they are like any other portrait.
I am painting a 4 month old baby. First glance well there is a baby but if you look a little bit deeper you can see what her Mom looks like and her Dad and what she will look like all grown up. It is all there.
No portrait is frivolous. They are important statements of your facts. This is your face that you have been given and what you do with that face is up to you.
I think about this too when I am painting someone. All the life that they will live.
I am not looking at how pretty they are but how wonderful just have a unique identity in that face. Each face is wonderful. Each one.
Look and See.

Most of our lives are caught up with little things that are really not important.
If you were traveling in the desert and were so thirsty for water and there were only a few drops left in the canteen. you would cherish those drops more than gold.
The thing about life is we don’t know how many drops we have left.
Our canteen might be half full or it might be running on fumes. You don’t know until it is too late. Then those last few drops are really really important and it makes you think how important the other drops were too but we just did not think about it.
To live is such a way as imagining that there are just a few left will revolutionize your life.
Don’t leave anything unsaid. And don’t say anything that is not what you would want to have your last words to be.
Words are the way we express our drops of life and therefore are ultimately important.
To help myself remember this (and I do forget it the second I stop writing this)
I am going to make a visual reminder. Artists are naturally visual so that works for me but you might be more inclined to use some other sense. I
am going to think of a teardrop diamond because that is what we have to work with in this life. each drop is a diamond so precious it should make you cry.

It is important to have a trademark look to your art.
Your model is so important as they are going to be your whole look.
Especially when you are doing a series it is good to have a model that is your main idea.
Today I found my hawaiian girl face.
It turns out that she is a gal that is working out in front of me in strength training class. I overheard her say she was going to Hawaii to see a grandmother so I asked her if she was born there and she was.
What I did not see before was that she happens to have the perfect face to do over and over in many different lights and looks. Her actual face is a cross between “Blossom” and ” ” Blue Butterfly.”
I am so glad to have found an actual person to use for a model.
Pegge Hopper is a well known painter who does Hawaiian women and it looks like the same person over and over. She is a “Pegge Hopper” woman.
I have my girl now I have to do 10 paintings of her till she is a part of my soul,
I will post when I get the first one done.

To paint someone I have a relationship with is way way different from painting a face that I do not know of course.
All of them comes into play. I am looking past the face and the spirit of them is flying all over the page.
I think about how they are. If they are sweet or kind or creative. All that has to come through.
It is very personal and I feel like it is my duty.
If I can do this I should do it of all the people I know really well.
A camera made picture may say a thousand words but a painting says a million.

I realize now that this kind of portrait is not about me. It is about them. It is not about my skill or anything to do with me.
I am just being with them for an extended period of time. So it is all them.
You paint your own portrait by who you are.