[email protected] long does it take YOU to paint a portrait?

[Michele Rushworth]

People are always asking me "How long did it take you to do that?" I always answer very vaguely and usually with something like "Oh, months!", which is usually the time a painting has been in progress, from concept to delivery.

It has been my experience that potential clients (and that's just about everyone) want to know how long something took me so they can do some quick mental math about how much I would earn per hour and if my prices are reasonable on that basis. That's not how I price my work or how I want it to be perceived.

And, as someone pointed out, thinking time and time spent ignoring the work are as often as valuable as time in front of the easel when it comes to seeing what needs to be done to complete a piece properly.

If they ask me to be specific in terms of the hours I actually spent painting it I always say that I don't keep track.

[Khaimraj Seepersad]

Michael,

I have to apologize. I was thinking and responding strictly along the lines of studio philosophy.

I am very well, thanks for asking.

[Cynthia Daniel]

Okay, from a managerial standpoint, I'll put in my two cents about being aware of hours spent on a portrait. Some of you know I previously managed a portrait artist. One of the things we used was a log sheet of hours spent on each portrait. It wasn't to rush him needlessly, it was to have some idea how much time was actually spent on a portrait and how much he was making per hour. This included any hours planning, sketching, stretching and prepping the canvas, etc.

From there, we could evaluate whether all those hours were valid or not and what he could do, if anything, in the future to improve. Would it be cost efficient to train someone else to prep the canvases? Did he waste a lot of hours at the end fiddling needlessly because he really didn't want to let the portrait go?

That may seem to some to be a cold approach, but there was never any intention to short cut the quality of the portrait. We simply used a tool to help us make management decisions in the future.

Michael, somewhere in this Forum there is a post by Karin where she talks about putting in hours to really become a pro. Maybe it's the one called "So, you wanna be a pro?" If we could find that, it might address what you were originally talking about. But, I think this topic really spun off into a couple of different directions.

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

People are always asking me "How long did it take you to do that?" I always answer very vaguely and usually with something like "Oh, months!", which is usually the time a painting has been in progress, from concept to delivery. Michele

Politicians have learned that you don't have to answer the question that is asked. You give the questioner the information you want them to know. In other works, you control the conversation. Additionally, It helps to have pat answers for the awkward situations you find yourself in (usually centered on money issues).

If someone asks, "How long does it take to do a [this) painting," you answer, "I do about eight (twelve, twenty...) paintings a year."

If they ask, "How much do you charge," you say, "My prices begin at $1,000, ($5,000, $10,000)".

When it's time to get paid, you present the client with the bill, then you don't have to ask for payment.

The idea is to not get involved in rationalization (which usually leads into an apology) as to why you charge what you charge. No, "I've been studying for 10 years" or "A 3/4 is $4,000, but you can get a half figure with hands for $3,000...etc..."

Peggy

[Catherine Muhly]

I thought Michael was saying that the time needed to execute a single given portrait can be expected to go down when the painter has had a great deal of hands-on practice over dozens, scores or hundreds of paintings leading up to the current portrait. In the main, I would agree. Practice has allowed me to improve my craft, just as practice does for the concert pianist, or the tennis player.

One thing I discovered for myself recently that reduces the time required to paint a portrait, and to paint a better portrait at that, is to get all the decisions made in one or more scaled-down preliminary color note(s). I don't know if it was Gerome who said it, but it was to the effect that he "never picked up his brush until he knew exactly what the painting was going to look like."

[Michele Rushworth]

Ironically, I think I'm getting slower at painting portraits because I expect a much higher quality from myself than I did even six months ago. Taking the trip to NYC for the ASOPA conference this past May taught me how to see in a much more refined way. Because of that I think my recent portraits (whenever I get them sent to Cynthia for my SOG website!) will show what I think is a quantum leap in quality -- but not speed! Maybe once I absorb everything I learned into my work and it becomes second nature I'll start to be able to complete a commission in fewer hours, but for now I'm much slower than I was a year ago!

[Mari DeRuntz]

Michele,

Can you post some of your recent work on the unveilings section of this Forum?

[Michele Rushworth]

My favorite is not quite done. Soon, I hope!

[Michael Fournier]

How long it takes you to paint any particular painting can vary greatly, depending on your style of painting.

If you paint in the classical style using a underpainting followed by many layers of color, then the very fact that oils take time to dry will add days to your process. If you are a wet-in-wet, or alla prima painter, then you actually try to finish a painting in one sitting. But of course, that does not count any preliminary sketches or reference gathering. And, of course, it also does not mean just because you try to finish in one sitting that you will. Even the great Sargent, as Marvin pointed out, had to paint areas over and over to get the effect he wanted, even though in looking at his work today, it looks as if he just laid down a single brush stroke and moved on.

Now I personally enjoy paintings of both styles and actually include some of both styles in my painting, as I start wet-in-wet, and may finish wet-on-dry. But I lean more toward a direct approach, and almost never do a monochromatic underpainting.

As for longevity of the piece of art based on how long it took to paint, I don't think there is any connection between the two. I could work for years on a failed painting and Richard Schmid could finish a masterpiece in one hour. I have a quote from an article about Richard Schmid. In this article he states, "I rarely go beyond three hours in painting a subject." Now the success of any painting like that style is not in how long it takes to paint that paintin, but in the hours of training that it took to be able to put down a stroke of paint so accurate in value, color and placement, that the first stoke is the final stroke needed to represent that area.

I personally like to use this analogy:

The advanced alla prima painter is like the advanced blues musician. For just as the blues artist strives to says more with a single note, the alla prima painter strives to says more with a single brush stroke. While to the uninitiated, blues music seems simple compared to classical music's complex arrangements, so does alla prima painting's loose brush work look simple compared to the more controlled and more tim-consuming classical style of painting. But anyone who has tried to play the blues can tell you there are years of practice behind that one note, and so it is with alla prima painting. There are many years of practice behind that one brush stroke. So I ask you this: is an alla prima painting worth less or does it have less an impact on the art world, just because it took hours instead of days to complete? Or does Muddy Water's "Mamie" have less feeling, or have less a lasting impact on the world of music because it uses a simple blues progression? After all it is not how long it took to create, but how well it speaks its meaning that matters.