Over at Photo.net, the editors pick 35 of their favorite children’s portraits.
“Unique Children’s Portraits: innocent eyes wide open, candid portraits, sincere honest expressions, serious child thoughts, children focused on learnigng a new skill, glimpses of a child’s make-believe world, happiness without boundaries…”
“The Photo.net editors selected a handful of images illustrating creative children’s portrait photography. Many of our talented photo.net portrait photographers have captured glimpses of child innocence, playfulness and creativity in unique settings. Please add your favorite children’s portrait photography to the comments section below.”
The pictures live here.
In Nashville’s The Tennessean, MiChelle Jones, writing about “The Contemporary Portrait” exhibit at the LeQuire Gallery, explains that the gallery’s portrait business is not suffering and notes that the exhibition started as an economic trend.
“Gallery director Elizabeth Cave says she noticed a strange thing: Despite the increasingly bad economic news, commissions for portraits had remained steady; in fact, there seemed to be an increase in demand.”
“It’s been a big part of Alan (LeQuire)’s work for 25 years,” Cave said during the show’s packed opening, “but the last six months have been especially busy.”
The Tennessean article is here, and the LaQuire Gallery site can be found here.
Continue reading about Portraiture Flourishes Despite Economy
El Greco is best known for his dramatic figures featuring the full range of human emotions, but he was also an accomplished portraitist. 100Swallows provides a brief survey of El Greco’s portraits, placing them in the time line of the artist’s life.
The full read is here.
The portrait is probably the least likely candidate for painting with a palette knife. A portrait requires a high degree of control, but with a palette knife compared to a brush, you lose some of this control.
However, if you can pull it off, what you gain is a painting that may be more lively, more expressive, and more exciting. Kentucky artist Bill Guffey can pull it off. In this article, he provides some insight on the use of the palette knife, using a recent portrait as an example.
Following his insights and the image of the portrait, don’t miss the the close-up shots of his knife work. Also, be sure to check out the links to his online galley and his blog. You’ll find that his landscapes are equally as compelling as his portraits. –Greg
This interesting read in London’s The Independent argues that the upsurge of interest in portrait competitions is a sign of an increased interest in portraiture in general.
Citing the National Portrait Gallary’s BP Portrait award in particuliar, the article contends that “the popularity of the BP Portrait Award is indicative of a new interest in portraiture in general, which is itself stimulated by the number of competitions for portraiture, both painted and photographic, which now exist…”
(more…)
In this short tutorial at Digital-Photography-School.com, guest contributor “sarahgirl” describes how to set up a studio portrait shoot with one light and a reflector. Here’s a tiny taste:
“I was still able to throw the wall out of focus because I used a little zoom (70mm) and had the subject away from the wall. I could have stood further back and zoomed in more to cause the back wall to blur even more. The distance from the wall also causes the wall to become darker. If you want it lighter you can move your subject a little closer to the wall.”
The tutorial can be read here.
In this feature article, Ohio USA artist Nora Sallows shares her approach to oil portraiture. A few samples of her expressive brushwork are presented following the text, as well as where you can find her on the web. –Greg
Continue reading about Nora Sallows: My Approach to Oil Portraits
At London’s “The Independent,” Charles Darwent gives an unflattering review of Sherman’s latest portrait exhibit:
“Repellent is, I think, not too strong a word for Cindy Sherman’s latest suite of portraits, five of which are on show at her London gallery.”
“Her portraits, in not really being portraits, seem to set out to fool us – to convince us that they are representations of other people when they are all of Sherman herself. Given the post-Renaissance belief that portraiture has a duty to reveal hidden truths, this seems particularly heinous. You might see Sherman as having a moral intent: the camera proverbially never lies, but hers does nothing but. In a world increasingly defined by pictures – the millions of images thrown at us daily by television, print media and the internet – it is a useful lesson, although one we have already been taught by, say, the staged street-shots of Jeff Wall. For all their upfront status as art objects de luxe, Sherman’s portraits wear their fakery on their sleeve.”
The exhibit is at Sprüth Magers until May 29. Follow the links and reach your own opinion:
Continue reading about Darwent Not Fond of Cindy Sherman’s Portraits
Joshua Bolduc takes you step by step in drawing a digital portrait using basic photoshop brushes.
Ten images show each stage of the drawing, starting with a linear sketch and ending with the rendered portrait.
“It’s important to stay loose while drawing so go ahead and scribble in shapes, keep an eye on the grid as you do this but don’t be overly concerned about getting it perfect, this will come later. ”
“The process in theory is very simple but it takes a long time. I spent close to 20 hours on this project and there is more I can do with it (such as fix her left eye and thumb).”
The tutorial can be found here.
Continue reading about Joshua Bolduc’s Digital Portrait Tutorial
I’m a little late on this one, but I’ve found that online images don’t fade. Sometimes they just go away, but they never fade.
At lensculture.com, Liza Fetissova curates the portraits of 5 Russian photographers: Evgeny Mokhorev, Oleg DOU, Marina Lapina, and Margo Ovcherenko. The work of these photographers and others can be seen at the Russian Tea Room, a gallery in Paris. Liza is the director of that gallery.
“The photography exhibition ‘Regarde-moi dans les yeux’ (or ‘Look me in the eyes’), at the Russian Tea Room Gallery is an attempt to study the question of identity of Russian photography. Through the portraits of their comrades, the photographs exhibited here approach the issue of Russian photography like a magnifying glass, trying to answer two crucial mirroring questions: “What is a Russian portrait?” and “What does Russian photography truly look like?”
The article lives here. You can view more from these photographers at the Russian Tea Room site.
Continue reading about Look Me In the Eyes: Russian Photographic Portraits
I’ve discovered that Joe Zeltsman’s book, “The Zeltsman Approach to Traditional Classic Portraiture” is available online. The 16 chapters appear to be complete, with plenty of images to illustrate the various topics of the book. The book is full of useful information on a classical approach to facial valuation, posing, and lighting. The book is written for photographers, but I believe portrait painters and will also find this information useful.
I’ve not run down the source of the book’s posting — I hope it does not violate any copyrights. I know that Zeltsman was a popular portrait photographer who died last December. His influence was widespread, and included another well known teacher, Marty Zucker. Chapter one of the book includes a brief biography.
The book lives here.
Continue reading about Zeltsman Classical Portraiture Book Online
Renouned artist Nelson Shanks will receive the Portrait Society of America’s lifetime achievement award on April 25 at the society’s annual conference.
I can’t find any information on about this on the Society’s web site , except for a mention in the pdf brochure. I came by this information via an entry on phillyburbs.com:
Says Shanks: “I’m honored to receive the Portrait Society of America’s gold medal. We must all strive to achieve the highest standard in painting and the portrait as fine art.”
You can see Nelson Shank’s work here .
Continue reading about Nelson Shanks Lifetime Achievement Award
It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to have the legendary Daniel Greene critique your portrait painting in front of the camera and 20 others. But it’s less hard now thanks to an entry in Susan Carlin’s art journal sharing the experience with both words and a video.
“…there were perhaps 20 or more people watching and listening. Gulp. I was especially braced when it was my turn, since I was second-to-last of those receiving critiques, and he had not pulled any punches on those who had come before. He had pointed out positives, yes, and had been quite blunt about the problems. The first 40 seconds of the critique he was silent as he studied the painting.”
Continue reading about Daniel Greene’s Critique of Carlin’s Portrait
Motivated by a show of Rubens drawings at the MET, and some portraits she saw last summer in Vienna, “Goethe Girl” explores Goethe’s take on Rubens.
“..but looking through his writings on art I discovered that Rubens was a lifelong enthusiasm.
Here’s a quote from Goethe on Ruben’s female figures: “What the painter hasn’t loved, doesn’t love, he should not portray, cannot portray. You find Rubens’ women too fleshy! I tell you, they were his women, and had he populated heaven and hell, the air, the earth, and the sea with ideal beings, then he would have been a bad husband, and powerful flesh would not have grown from his flesh nor [powerful] bone from his bone.”
Read the entire essay here.
From the Portrait Society of America Web Site:
“The Art of the Portrait® Conference is right around the corner, and we would like to invite you to register for our celebration of excellence in portraiture and figurative art. Attendees from around the globe enjoy opportunities to experience more than 30 individual demonstrations, lectures, panel discussions, workshops and shop directly from top manufacturers at special discounted rates, including Art Boards, Peggy Baumgaertner, Custom Canvas Workshop, Gamblin Artists Colors, General Pencil Co., HK Holbein Artist Materials, Hughes Easels, Jack Richeson & Co., Liliedahl Video Productions, Martin/ F. Weber, Silver Brush Ltd., Studio Incamminati, Turtlewood Palettes, Natural Pigments and Signilar Art Videos. Attendees are also invited to visit area museums and ateliers, share portfolios in one-on-one critique sessions with agents and internationally acclaimed artists, view an exhibition of top works from the International Portrait Competition and network with over 700 attending artists, agents and manufacturers. Join us April 23 – 26, 2009 in Washington, D.C. for the 11th Annual The Art of the Portrait”
Continue reading about Portrait Society of America Conference
When I saw this progression of a digital portrait from start to finish on Heather’s blog, I recognized the mass-in approach many oil painters use. I suspected she had been trained in classical media. As it turns out, she has. It seems to me that digital artists who were first trained in classical media can do good work in any 2 dimensional media.
For this work Heather used a pressure sensitive digital tablet and started with a blank ‘canvas’ — without tracing: “Everything is drawn by eye though, no painting over a photograph or cutting pieces of the photograph to match up the sizes. I think it’s better practice that way.”
Continue reading about Heather’s Digital Portrait: A Progression
The U.K. Guardian reports on this week’s sale of drawings in Dorchester that includes a David Hockney portrait sketch of Peter Schlesinger, and “is expected to fetch up to £15,000.”
“The portrait, along with another Hockney sketch, a pencil drawing by Henri Matisse valued at up to £40,000, and etchings by Picasso and Lucian Freud worth between £30,000 and £25,000, have been owned by a private collector in Wiltshire since the 1970s, who is described by auctioneer Guy Schwinge as having ‘a refined eye’.”
Here’s a link to the story
Over at TakeOutPhoto, Marc responds to a question about how to approach people on the streets without creeping them out. So he hits the streets with the goal of asking 10 people for permission to shoot.
“I reacted quickly when I saw a girl with some pretty original tattoos coming toward me with her bike. “Great tatts! Can I take a picture?” She obliged. It was that simple. We talked about how a friend of hers did the tattoos then she introduced me to her girlfriend (I really should have taken a picture of them together), and that was that. I love the personality in her expression.”
After relating a few more experiences like the one above, Marc shares what he learned. Like this, for example: “Most people will let you take their portrait if you are natural, complimentary, and friendly about it. Tell them it’s for a project if you like or an assignment from a crazy blog that you read..”
The read and the accompanying photos are here.
National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition “Reflections/Refractions: Self-Portraiture in the Twentieth Century,” runs from today through August 16.
Wendy Reaves, curator of prints and drawings, said that exhibit offers 187 portraits from 66 artists, including Alexander Calder, Edward Hopper, Chuck Close, David Hockney, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol.
The drawings “….in the exhibition make it clear how much of a ‘different species’ the self portrait is from a portrait done of a sitter and how much self-portraiture, a 500-year tradition, has changed just in the 20th century. In a self-portrait, as opposed to a commissioned portrait, for example, the artist doesn’t have to appease a patron.”
The announcement can be found here, and the photo gallery lives on this page.
Continue reading about Self-Portraiture Exhibition Opens Today
It’s about creativity, life, and art — this short video is deserving all the net buzz it’s generating.
Atlanta based editorial photographer Zach Arias responded to Scott Kirby’s invitation to guest-blog. It starts out whimsically and ends up — well, just see for yourself.
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