Thanks to those of you who have asked for a little background to how the portraits come to be.

Creating a portrait takes a serious commitment from myself and the sitter.  The portrait of my dad took about 10 sittings for the drawings and another 10 or 15 for the painting.

I am currently working on two portraits, one of my wife and another of my children.  In this post, I’ll show you the drawings of my wife that led up to the portrait. In a later post, I’ll take you through the painting stages…

So, here’s the first drawing.

Drawing Number 1

The first drawing is where I start with knowing.  I know what I want and I just draw it exactly as I want.  In this case, I want a big head and I want to reflect the loving and youthful character of my wife.

Why the big head? I think there is a certain ratio I like to have between the size of the head and the canvas. Also, big heads signify affection, as any child psychologist will tell you.

Here is the second drawing. 

Drawing number 2

The second drawing is more of an exploration, an attempt to define the structure of the face, an opportunity to let go of prejudices. The result is something which eliminates character and so becomes less of a caricature.

Drawing number 3

The third drawing tries to bring back the character that was lost in from the first drawing.  At the same time it tries to forge a more precise rendering of the character.  In particular, what is better about this drawing than the first is the shape of the head which portrays the character in a more meaningful way. What’s worse about this drawing as that we’ve lost the eyes.  I don’t really know how that happened…

Drawing number 4

Drawing number 4 accentuates the eyes and posture and is more of a composition.

Drawing number 5

And the final drawing in the series shows a kind of disintegration of the process. 

What’s interesting to see is that each work really tries to correct the previous works.  We can see that the critical faculties are balanced by the positive forces so that each work alternately forgets and remembers what was bad and what was good about the previous works.

The reason to move on to paintings is to have a way that all the versions can be overlaid to produce something which is more comprehensive, though less spontaneous, than the drawings.

More in Portraits, Work.