Brother & Sister

[Michele Rushworth]

it's rare to have a client who allows their kids' portrait have the faces de-emphasized like this

So true, at least in my experience. But you're right that this approach brings the work much closer to being a work of art able to stand on its own merits outside of the family.

I think at one end of the continuum of the things we call "portraits" there are school photographs, taken purely for documentation purposes. "Here's what Billy looked like at age 12". This painting is at the other end of the spectrum, with a different purpose entirely. Clients typically want the documentation thing, sometimes at the expense of whatever it is that we call "art".