[Will Enns]

I have long been of the opinion that portraiture is the highest of the fine art forms. I believe a portrait artist is absolutely unlimited in what he or she can paint.

Further, only a relative few people have enough talent to do it well; fewer yet have the drive it takes. Still, there are many of us who want to do portraiture, until we discover how brutally difficult it is. That accounts for many of the people who sign up, but don't participate. With the best of intentions, they think, I'll post something for critique when I get good enough. Of course, most of the time, this never happens.

Some of us simply discover the market for formal portriature is small. As in my case, I have gone where my success has led: into illustration, where I can still paint people and the lessons learned on this forum still help me. But I don't post any of that stuff because this is a portraiture forum, and I want to honor Cynthia's wishes to keep it focused.

That speaks for my lack of participation.

But what I have learned here is invaluable. I could not have picked it up by reading a book because the book cannot look at my work and say "these shadows should be cool," or "that jaw is sticking out the side of that face," as Steven has done, phrased much more graciously than that, of course.

Still, I'm the typical starving artist. What I earn from my art would make a church mouse feel wealthy by comparison. So I don't think I could pay a subscriber fee.

But I would be willing to send a check right now to show my support and appreciation for the help and encouragement I have recieved in the past. It won't be very much, but it will be from the heart.

Cynthia, why don't you post a mailing address? Maybe there are others like me?


A sad truth:
People will rarely pay for something if they can get it for free. And if they can get a cheap junky version for free, they usually won't pay for a good version. It's sad, but we are a race of cheapskates. It is inherent in our psyche (generally speaking.) I myself am not exempt - nowhere is the phenomenon is more obvious to me. Clearly, there are exceptions, cases in point being those who contribute advice on this forum and freely share of their time and hard-won knowledge.

It's clear that a fee will diminish the volume of paprticipation. But maybe not the quality if, as Cynthia suggests, the expert contributors are not required to pay. Maybe the quality would even rise dramatically with less time being spent educating beginners on basic composition, how a brush should be held, how to post, etc.

So, if the forum continues to be available I will continue to access it as needed.

Will