Cartoony Portraits

I know everything is subject to personal taste, but I love portraits that are painterly and capture the character/expression of the subject. But I also love some portraits where the subjects are what I call 'Cartoony'. Jessica Rockwell's is an example of this type of portrait. Some of them I loved, where she seemed to combine the silly with the real.

I was going to ask where you draw the line between something that is too much like a cartoon and something that isn't, but again, that is subject to individual's tastes. So will ask this, as portrait artists, (I've seen a lot of your works, BRAVO!) As you are painting, do your paintings ever look too cartoony to you? Is there something you do to avoid this or correct this?

DJ

I have been informed that my use of the term "cartoony" would be insulting. I did not intend to insult anyone, perhaps using the term 'fantasy quality' would have been better. There are many famous artists who interpret portraits in a variety of ways. What I meant to say is that not all look like a photograph. There are many different styles and I like and respect and enjoy all these styles.

Some portraits have a magical quality I would like to capture but my efforts to do so have resulted in something that looks like (to me) too much like a cartoon. So I used the word "cartoony" to indicate something good.

What I was trying to ask is how you take a portrait from looking like a photograph to a "painting", with the magical/fantasy quality, and how do you keep it from going too far. I wondered what is in the artist's mind, what they see when they look at people are able to generate that 'magical' quality.

DJ