Paula
 

This is a portrait. I had a couple of people right up tell me how right on my likeness is, which is why I am posting, but there is a double direction going here.

I have been doing heads for a while, and am really happy with my likenesses but would like to make my general portraits more saleable to strangers, too. I seem to have a real aversion to backgrounds so I am emphasizing the figurative quality of of the pose. I used to fill the page with the face, had no problem doing 20" x 16" HEADS only. It is just not working and I don't know why. So now I am spending more time in studio on pose.

This is from our usual Saturday afternoon 3-hour open studio, but I had to leave for a good 1/2 hour to run and pick up a year old, undelivered commission :) so the total time is about 2.5 hours.

This is on sueded moss green mat board with Terry Ludwig pastels. 20" x 16".

I am trying to do the juggle between figurative and purely descriptive. I am having a hard time finding a style.

dj*, not sure what you mean by

Your strokes are very much in your usual style and say "Debra Jones" to me. The chair is well-delineated but because it's so much lighter it fights the figure for dominance in the picture. And I'm not used to you putting so much shadow in the flesh tones, particularly in the face. Aside from those details I think it's a good portrait, and because you have the person within a setting, it tells a bit more about her, don't you think, than a simple head rendition?

Style...check out the other picture I did.
 

I am being torn in a couple of directions. I think I have a gift for likenesses and I really enjoy doing them. I can paint heads until we get a 20 degree day down here some August, but I would really like to earn a living. Although I do pictures of people and they pay me, there is nothing large enough coming in to call myself a professional portrait artist.

Maybe marketing. But I would like to show to a wider range of people. The "Strangers-watching- you-eat" that I have come to call my studio portraits are all personality studies to ME but they lack a story that seems to interest others. They are functioning as promotional pieces, not work.

I am hoping to attract a client who either likes my style of work so they may forgive me loving doing the painting and help me keep my sanity overlooking that missplaced nostril, or will actually buy the piece right out. By spending the greater part of the pose working on my banes: hands, clothes (yuck), and stretching my observation of the room, the environment, I am hoping to figure out what that thing called style is.

I am developing confidence. It is heady. Knowing something good keeps coming out when I open my paintbox is as addictive as drugs! Now, you may laugh, but I need to get these things out of my house! I literally am wall to wall art and don't take the time to stop painting to figure out how to sell. If I can find a product I feel happy with I can take a body of work around and possibly settle into my niche.

My single gallery sale EVER was the one the client pointed to and said "I want that Koboyashi looking one." When I studied with Milt, the thing I wanted was his wisdom, not his style. It is very hard not to osmosis his look, as everyone in town that has studied with him seems to do, but to keep the personal feeling and find my own way to pack a picture with the emotion his have, whatever that emotion is.

THAT is what I mean by style.

dj*, few people unrelated to the subject want to buy an out-and-out portrait, by which I mean traditional head study focusing on the individual. Figurative works are an easier sell - people in a setting that evokes more than a reaction to a specific person. The human form is graceful and evocative and very attractive, but the particular example has to have more universal appeal to be saleable. I have a painting of a redheaded girl in a green boat that apparently has that appeal, because I've had perfect strangers wanting to buy it. Some of my kids' portraits are like that too, such as the one of the little girl with fairy wings or the child with a baby chick or the girl on the beach with the ladybug. I think you're on the right track in shrinking the person relative to the size of the support and making the background more important.

Yes, MK does have a very potent style. I can imagine how hard it is for students of his to avoid becoming near-clones. But I think your own style shines through. Keep working on the figurative paintings and I think it will all come out right in the end. You just started doing this, after all!