OK, I'll bite...
 

(pun intended) Tom, I'm curious as to why you think liking your subjects too much would skew the work? I would think that would be an advantage! Imagine trying to make a good painting of someone you DIDN'T like or respect! That would be the untimate test to me.

This seems to be an unofficial string for voting on teeth, so my personal preference is for no teeth, not because I am afraid to paint them, I just like the look of the painting more. Tom's portraits are wonderful and he handles teeth beautifully, but diversity is a good thing, especially with portrait painting. We pick up great tips from each other, but we still need that individuality.

I can't believe it's August already!

We may be opening up a separate thread here, but here goes. I phrased that post partly that way to spark discussion. I really don't apologize for liking my clients. It's healthy.

Maybe I'm just wistful for the really quiet, evocative introspection I see in other's portraits and would like to explore more of it in mine. One of my favorite child portraits ever is a wonderful, quiet, head-and-shoulders that Dawn Whitelaw placed in the PSOA finals year before last. I wonder if I could bring a little more "discerning watchfulness" to my sessions and get this, but I'm pretty outgoing and I know it influences what I get back. And if I think TOO much while shooting my reference, I get in my own way and miss everything. It's a Zen thing.

Also, I do often give my clients a choice between an outward and an introspective image, and often press for the latter, but I'm enough of a businessperson not to get in a huff if they don't choose what I want them to. And, I do a good bit of posthumous work, and the available reference in these instances is usually a smiling file photograph. So some of it is out of my control. Cynthia's point about having what you WANT to paint in your portfolio is well taken, also -people will pick what you show 'em.

I'm going to bow out of this thread now and see where it goes. Maybe check back in later.

Love to everyone.

I've created a new topic called "Liking your clients?" in the Cafe. To continue this subject, please post over there. http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...&threadid=1077

Thanks!

At the risk of reviving a topic that may already have been chewed to death, I wanted to point out that no one can maintain a natural-looking smile while sitting for hours at a time. My first attempt at an oil portrait depicted my teenage daughter, who posed for me while I painted, and her final expression was bland and uninspiring. Then I began working from my own photos in which I typically try for more spontaneous expressions. Particularly with children, that seems to involve a smile complete with teeth. That look works well with my specialty of "portraits in a natural setting." Personally I really enjoy portraits of children with infectious grins on their little faces, although that may not be to everyone's taste. However, I do think that if the masters had had Nikons we'd see a lot more teeth in their paintings.

Poor Teeth
 

Some time ago I posted a portrait with big teeth on this thread and recently finished the face on the attached painting. As you can see he did not worry about showing his short, crooked, and stained teeth. (Quite a difference) Years ago I worked with this former exec and remembered the ever present smile and knew that a closed mouth would be uncharacteristic. Friends and strangers to the subject don't seem to notice or comment about them.

Close up of the above.

Beautiful job, Jim. It's amazing how much the unique positioning of the teeth in a subject's mouth lends credibility to a likeness. If you'd given him perfect teeth (not that you would have been tempted) it would truly have fulfilled Sargent's comment about a portrait's being a painting with something wrong about the mouth.

Tough teeth
 

I was commissioned to do this portrait of a man whose smile only showed his lower teeth!!!

Close up of this
 

This was the only photograph available of this man. Sometimes you just do it.

While I respect any artist's right not to show teeth, I agree with Tom Edgerton that if it's central to the subject's character, just do it.

A lot of my subjects don't take themselves too seriously and the ones who are very animated sometimes look more natural smiling than not. So I do paint smiling portraits as well as unsmiling ones. Most people want some sort of pleasant expression.

Smiles shouldn't be considered a big no-no. I've done some research and find we're in pretty good company. You can go back to The Laughing Cavalier, but also in today's world I have pictures of smiling portraits by: Everett Raymond Kinstler, Dean Paules, Daniel Greene and Robert Schoeller. Not that they necessarily do a lot of them, but they do do them.