Hello and Glad to be Here
 

Who I Was
Before I began to focus on children's portraiture, I was a freelance and staff equestrian illustrator (South Carolina Equestrian Magazine). After the children came along, I discovered what a fascinating subject children were. I have largely focused my creative energies there ever since. We moved from a very busy art market in 1997 to be near my parents in rural southwest Arkansas. Such a different world this is as far as art goes, but it gave me a chance to slow down and turn my attention to homeschooling the children; Arkanas is consistently in the bottom three states for ACT/SAT scores. Now my oldest son has graduated to college and my second one graduates this spring from our homeschool. I am once again finding time to turn my attention back to painting.


Who I am Right Now
With having such limited time for painting over the last five years, I am having to chip the rust off of skills a bit, restock some supplies, and assess where my skills are currently. My plan is to pick up my children's portraiture business again, so I am spending some time this spring to take a good look at how to work with my regional market conditions. It is also a time to explore new media and get some paintings in that I want to do before being pressed by a tight commission schedule. Oh, I hope to have that problem again.


Who I Want to Be
I plan on gradually building momentum over the spring and summer to reopen my portrait buisness in the fall. I join in the chorus of other voices here. I want to be the best portrait artist I can be. The access to other professional portrait artists is such a blessing. Even in the bigger art culture that I was in before the move to Arkansas, I never had the opportunities like I have now with the net, even if I do now live in a tiny rural town of only 365 people (and 1000 cows, 50 deer, 20 foxes, 30 skunks, and a million mosquitos and fire ants, hehehehe).


Some Samples:
Since I haven't been taking commissions for a few years, I guess I will share a few of the paintings that I did manage to fit in while homeschooling the children and one of my equestrian watercolors. The Arabian is a pretty tight crop because my digital file suffered a bit of curruption in the right side. I will have a reshoot with this painting in a month. But since this is a portrait forum, I am unlikely to get a second chance to share it. ;)

Hi Tammy, welcome to the Forum!

Thanks for the welcome Alexandra.

I love your paintings. I am particularly fond of the portrait of Nancy Bea Miller. I love how the children's drawings in the background show how important motherhood is to her. This is a woman who doesn't watch soap operas all day. The thought -filled expression and the ready clipboard shows she is engaged in many worthwhile activities and like many modern mothers must take time to plan to get all in to her day that she must. I love it. It speaks so much to me as a busy mother of four, homeschool co-op teacher, portrait artist, volunteer in the community, etc. It is the modern mother.

Tammy, welcome! Thank you for sharing a little-bit about self. Your work is quite impressive as well.

I have some fond memories of Littlerock my self. Some Years ago in the early 80s I drove from Dallas to Littlerock for a family Xmas . It was the year of that ice storm in Dallas if you recall. 1000 accidents the firs hour of driving that morning. The previous night I was in a t-shirt. Well, I under inflated my tires and driving a Datsun Z240 drove all that way to L-rock without a hitch. That was another lifetime.

Now, we are here to welcome you and talk art. So, pickup your brushes and stay a while.

Hello there Tammy and Welcome to the forum.

I really liked your work.

I didn't live down here that year, but from the ice storm we had here in December of 2000, I can well imagine. We were without electricity (and therefore heat and water) for 9 days. That was quite an adventure. I remember Christmas night laying in the complete blackness of no power and hearing tree limbs continuously crashing to the ground all around the house. One sound was coming from the fuse box in our closet, so John braved the storm and dropping limbs to go outside to see what was causing that sound. Literally there was 3 inches of ice on the outside electrical box and the weight of it was pulling the outside box off the wall. He had to hammer the ice off. Fortunately the box didn't get damaged; everyone in our rural area had to be without power that nine days. We would have been out even longer if that box had not survived. Only in the last two years has the vast forests of the region recovered enough that you cannot see the damage from that storm. For years it looked like a war zone. We lost every bough on our two pecan trees. Fortunately, the trees directly next to the house miraculously bent down below the edge of the roof before breaking and spared us the horror that many of our neighbors had when limbs feel on rooves. Yes, events like that really do stick with you.

Hello Tammy

It's nice to meet you.

Four children! And home-schooling! Wow! I only have one and I often feel rather desperate for time to work (let alone rest).

Sweet children's paintings. If they were commissions I am sure your clients loved them. Your horse painting is nice too.

Looking forward to chatting some more.

It really is hard to get time when they are small; though my most productive time for commissions was when I had two in early elementary level homeschooling and a baby. I put one of those baby backpacks to good use. Right now most of my kids are older. I have the ages of 19, 17 (in 12 days), 13 (in two weeks), and a 6 year old. Throw in a 7 year old that I babysit from 3am to 5:30 pm Monday to Friday and you get the idea how busy a place we have here. My kids naturally lean to the quiet, independent, and creative side though; that makes a huge difference. It has been much noisier and active since I started to babysit, which really has turned out to be a lot of fun.

I love being with them, watching them, I have so many moments in my head I want to get out into paint. I am really starting to challenge myself to move more and more away from a posed look and more toward narrative portraiture. Kids have such story-telling moments when you can capture them just being kids. That being said, there is a story behind the painting above with the red shoe. Lawns down here are quite hazardous between the fire ants and the stickers in the grass. Kids just cannot go barefoot with any safety. Murphy's Law says that one shoe always goes missing on a nice day to play outside - especially if everyone else is already out there having fun. Hence the longing look.

Hi Tammy -

Your work is beautiful. Welcome!

Welcome Tammy! My hat is off to anyone that can homeschool. I wish I had the patience for it. I have three and that seems more than I can juggle sometimes.

Your work is beautiful, I look forward to seeing more.

Hello Tammy,
Welcome!Nice to meet you. I hope you`ll have a lot of commissions very soon , your paintings are beautiful , thanks for sharing.

Grethe

Hi Tammy,
nice to see your work.. Welcome!

Welcome Tammy!

Thanks for your comprehensive and insightful introduction. Your portraits are stunning and you will really shine here. I look forward to your posts.

I sculpted a rather clunky looking horse compared to those you've illustrated. Fifteen years ago it was billed as the world's largest bronze equestrian monument. In it's current guise, it stands unveiled in Milan, Italy, and is meant to complete the Sforza commission Leonardo da Vinci commenced in the 1480's, but lost uncompleted for five centuries in 1501. There is a glimpse of it here in my intro.

Garth

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone.

Garth, I love your horse sculpture. You denigrate yourself too much. It is not at all clunky. I think it has marvelous strength and movement. I suspect that had children not come along and stirred a passion for that subject, I would probably be immersed in 3D equestrian at this time. But alas, all the 3D work I got in was some carving in the carousel animal style. That was lots of fun. But, I cannot imagine any subject eclipsing my love for painting children. I hope to be painting them until my last days. :)

I had set aside the next few months to just enjoy painting whatever children's paintings my heart desired before officially taking commissions again. However, my dentist has very generously given all his hygenist and office staff portraits as gifts, so I am now booked up for 10+ commissions via these gift ones and a few of the staff wants more than one. One of the ladies who is ordering beyond the gift ones wants hers completed in time to give as a Mother's Day present. So I have been quite busy to be certain it will be ready by then.

I am tempted to post it as a WIP or critique here in the forum. I am wondering what decisions go into deciding which forum to post it in. Do you post to critique if you want a no holds barred critique or select WIP if you want more moderate assessments and just to share the joy of the process?