Drying off

[Debra Jones]

This is a practice piece. I want to encourage more clientele for kids and dogs. Well yes and no. In my quest for more compositionally full pieces I was stunned by the light glowing around this little cherub two weekends ago a the beach. I secreted my camera under my hand and snapped two shots for the light and interraction. I am not posting because the models are not actualy models. I would like you to critique, if you would for style and composition as I am keeping the faces very loose for now. I will say the likeness is right on, but what I am trying to find out is how to make a right on likeness an interesting portrait.

Thanks for any and all help.

24x18 oil on canvas.

[Mike McCarty]

but what I am trying to find out is how to make a right on likeness an interesting portrait.

Debra,

Could you first clear something up for me? Is it that you are trying to move into more figurative compositions, and thus be able move your art through a gallery and avoid the clientele? Or, are you wanting to make your portraits more interesting to a portrait clientele?

[Debra Jones]

Well, lets just say I am trying to quit my day job.

I am not selling anything. Portraits or gallery. I know the economy is bad, but I am trying to get a marketable product, whatever it may be. Apparently the studies I do weekly, often twice a week, from life are honing my eye, but not my marketablity. I have full walls of strangers staring down on me and am the darling of my models, but I am not getting business. The open studio work I do is like staying in shape. I went to flab for a long time and will not stop working on my skils but I have got to get some of these out of my house.

Since people are my thing, I am trying to make more interesting pictures. IF I can get figurative out into galleries, then the wider exposure should help lure in commissions, but either will make me happy.

I don't enjoy working from photos as much as working from life, but as this little economic bind is keeping me in my tiny appartment awash in canvas and boards and mats and frames and boxes and paking material, I will have to figure out how to make the seed money to either get a studio or challenge myself to do a wider range of snapshot renderings. Ok, that is low. I need to get more creative in my whole composition for more of those kids sitting on the grass and leaning on window sills.

As I will not stop painting, it makes me very squirrley, I know it is some sort of leg work thing, wandering the streets with pictures and brochures drumming up business, I paint in every spare minute and keep going to the shop in the day. Something has got to give.

Desperation? Maybe that is my best answer.

[Mike McCarty]

I don't think I have any good answers for you. Your plight interests me because I struggle with these same rent, food issues every day. How does art pay the bills? Are you any good at basketball or golf?

I'm just typing out loud here, speaking in generalities. I think that when doing figurative work, the more a face is distinctly rendered, the less desirable it becomes to the gallery purchaser. But, it's a sort of self correcting process, when you widen the scene sufficiently, the size of the face diminishes and makes the tight rendering almost impossible. It has to be more about composition, color, attitude, and brush work than whether the persons features are true.

I've made a few gallery purchases over the years and I have always been a sucker for figuative works. I bought one in your state once, in Tuscon at the Settlers West gallery. A young boy sitting in a tree holding a rooster, by Valoy Eaton. I'd post the example here but that would mess up your critique.

Could it be that to much studio work is holding you back? You have a tendency (as I do) to crop tightly. Does this studio work bring about this phenomenon?

One thing seems clear to me, you have a real flare for painting, whether you paint portraits or figurative work. I think you need a manager, an agent, a pusher.

[Debra Jones]

You affirm what I suspect.

You are exactly right. I have been going in all directions possible, because I am returning to art after too many years fallow. I feel like an athlete with a use it or lose it mentality. If I am at a loss for an idea, I can get myself to studio.

Summer is usually the stretching time. Last year I was in a small show all about "nature" so I did cactus, ducks and trees. It was a big stretch for me and I must admit, down here in the 100 plus weather, plein aire is a bit life threatening, so I have stacks of photos. I don't like photos. I see differently. And there is something so easy, and so hard working from them.

I read over a book on marketing your art the other night, and the other problem I have is not getting out of my studio, but getting out of my house. I am trying to build a body of work. I still can't tell what is good and...well I CAN tell what is really bad, but in two years I have tried to build my resume. I have garnered finalist in Artist Magazine, three out of state shows, my first gallery and non-school local show. I am making entries for my resume. BUT most of this has been accomplished by mail. I have not figured out the subtilties of pounding the pavements nor know where these pavements are.

I am seeking an art pimp. If anyone wishes to take me on, please email me!

Mike you are a gift. Thanks for your thoughful and 100% correct assessment.