Eating crow!
 

I posted in another thread how I disliked having 4-minute poses in life model sessions. Taking a critical look at what I've done with the long poses, and sifting through the sketches from the 4-minute poses, I find there's a liveliness inherent in more interesting poses than what comes through the long sets which too often slump into "beached whale" mode.

I'm attempting to "salvage" a couple of those sketches, this is three hours into a study from a pencil sketch that doesn't provide much more information than an indication of the model's position. I'm having to correct anatomy and "invent" the other details . . . hopefully relying on the backlog of all that time spent painting from the life model.

Impressionism
 

From looking at your work I take it that you are an Impressionist painter. If that's the case you might want to look at Margaret Baumgartner's work. She is one of the artists profiled on the Stroke of Genius website. So you work as a portrait painter; do you make good money doing that? How would you suggest that I start off as a professional portrait painter?

Not really. My bad for posting sketches and unfinished work. While I'm much drawn to a painterly approach, and especially bravura handling as Sorolla and Sargent displayed I generally don't paint especially "loose".

I'm sure everyone's "story" how they began accepting or seeking portrait commissions would be unique. Building a lucrative practice as a portraitist requires an active local demand, so first it's necessary to become prominently visible, then readily available .

As with all aspects of art marketing, there definitely are price tiers in portraiture, too.

I feel this is now nearing completion . . . comments welcome!

At the risk of making this thread a "blog" . . . another start, mining the same vein . . .