I have started a ‘Portraiture’ class this year as a means to develop my painting technique. The way I see it, painting portraits is one of the biggest challenges in painting. It is immediately obvious if you haven’t been successful. You have to concentrate so hard to interpret what you see in front of you onto the canvas.
Our first sitting was line drawing only. I had forgotten my putty rubber which I think actually improves the picture as you cannot afford to get too hung up on perfection. If a line isn’t in the right place, then you draw it again somewhere else. I was quite pleased with the outcome and look forward to more next week.
.
As for Paul Emsley’s portrait of Kate unveiled this week, well that’s not what I’m aiming for. It reminds me of those portraits you can have done near Sacre Coeur in Paris. I appreciate he may have had to work from photos but it really does look so stilted and glassy. I think her description that the painting was ‘amazing’ was a good adjective to have used!
