Portraits, likeness and eyes

David

DAVID: My mate Dave

KATHY: Fantastic David love the light on his face !

MARIA: Looks like your twin brother

DAVID: A bit of the artist is in every portrait!

CHRIS: It’s very good!

And a self portrait by David:

DAVID: Self-portrait for LSC150

ESTHER: You’ve got the expression just right.

DAVID: Some friends said it wasn’t an exact likeness. I said that I don’t use grids or tracing but go freehand. The little mistakes and cracks are where the light gets in and bring character, as Leonard Cohen would say!

CHRIS: Definitely!

ESTHER: It’s so you though.

JOHN: Self portraits are very problematic. I actually think they are one of the hardest challenges in art since – to put it simply – we just don’t really know what we look like.

I have to be honest and say this doesn’t work for me either as a likeness or as a portrait. With a full-frontal face I believe you should be able to look into the eyes and feel the person, and I just don’t.

Eyes have to work together, or the whole face ‘dies’.

Compare this with the oil painting of David’s mate Dave (top of the post). I don’t know Dave, but I’m convinced by the portrait. And if Dave doesn’t look like that, well, he ought to.

Here’s Esther’s drawing from the Raw Umber session. Again, I don’t know him, but I’m convinced by the portrait.

Another portrait by David… rather different. Very nicely painted .

DAVID: Edward 1st built Caernarfon Castle, painted at Turner’s Painting School.

ESTHER: Oo I like it – you can feel the 3d-ness.

CHRIS: That’s really good!

JOHN: Impressive rendering of metallic texture and tonal values.

Here’s a photo which may possibly have been David’s image source – or similar to it. And it’s a reminder that what we actually see in a face, as in most things, is an arrangement of tones and shapes. Then the art of portraiture is to bring out life and personality from those tones and shapes.