To be a better portrait artist (in my opinion) I will end up needing the elegant background.
Your guitar player is interacting too and it kicks it out of strict portrait, but still is an excellent likeness. It is an elegant cross over. And not just someone watching you.
Another odd roadblock I am eliminating is the open studio I attend. I have the opportunity to do two portrait models a week and two nude study groups. It is wonderful no-brain motivation, but I don't always have the opportunity to create the pose.
My challenge is to make the most interesting composition or lighting that I can from what I am given. I think my knowlege of the human head has a lot to do with the fact that I get there before the model and stay where I put myself. I get some lulu angles, not the wonderful triangle on the cheek, so I have explored some territory where others fear to tread.
In fact, with this one I migrated across the room. The woman was facing a low flood light and was going blind, she said, where I was. Immediately I switched. I have a perverse thrill in taking the position from heck and pulling it off. Not that it shows a lot of interraction with the environment.
The open studio is down to two evenings for most of the summer so I will be forced to work from the mountain of photos I have taken for that theoretical purpose.
Hybrid Mode
