Thank you Michele, specifics are wonderful. I am going to print this one out. Trying to fuddle through the mass of information on this site & figure if it applies to what I am trying to do exactly can be confusing. This is helpful.

Feels most comfortable bare-chested
 

Kim: I have read the posts directed towards whether it's good to paint a child bare-chested or not. I believe an artist should paint a portrait to portray the child. In your case, I do agree with the others that the child looks scary but that doesn't mean that you can't paint him bare-chested. If the child feels most comfortable shirtless then you could still do that. You just may want to pose him differently.

Wende Caporale, pastel portrait painter, coincidentally has a bare-chested boy printed in her portrait book. Her comments were "his parents and I posed him in several different shirts. But the most natural photos of him turned out to be when he was shirtless, because this his how he feels most comfortable. This highlighted his free-spirited personality and resulted in a striking portrait."

There is no set rules out there in what an artist can or cannot paint. I do admit I haven't seen too many bare-chested boys but as mentioned above if it's the child's personality...go for it!

I don't think I ever said Kim's subject matter was off-limits. My recommendation to her was to include things in her portfolio that would be most likely to appeal to the most people, both from a compositional and quality point of view.

I was referring to these comments that were made to Kim:

Good luck Kim in the photo tips that Michelle has posted in photographing the boy. It looks like good advice to follow

Cynthia,

No, you did not indicate that anything was off limits. You had indicated (how I read it anyway) that you felt more affluent clients would not be as interested in bare-chested children. I was just curious if the other artists agreed that this seemed to be their experience.

Although you clearly have a lot of talent, I find this painting to be disturbing because of the expression on the child's face. A shirt on this figure would not improve it.

I would not recommend that this painting be shown to a client.

Goodness, such controversy. Here's my experience. I had a client that wished to have her 7 yr. old painted with his shirt off in the woods. As it turned out, he sort of resembled Huck Finn and we went with the idea. I thought nothing of it until one day I walked in my studio, saw the painting, and thought "oh my, he looks naked!" I was so alarmed I immediately called the mom and said, "I think we need to put a tank top on him". She saw it.. completely disagreed and actually loved it. Other people that saw the portrait thought the same thing I did. I finished her piece, and decided not to include it in my portfolio because it made ME uncomfortable.

The bottom line is, (I feel) we need to include or not include paintings based on our OWN feelings, and face the consequences (if any).

I completely agree with this, but she did ask. :)

Melissa, Stanka & Karin,

Thank you for the advice & input.

I wish I had gotten such a response (in terms of numbers of comments - not the strong dislike) when I posted for a critique.