Portraits: Likeness vs Identity

Working With Faces

 

Nothing is as scary as trying to paint a likeness of someone you know. Especially if that person will see it!

 

How do you go about it? How realistic should you be? When it is someone you know well, there are tons of emotions involved. It is really hard to view them dispassionately. When you need to reduce them to basic shapes, it is necessary to mentally stand back from them and try and get down a good likeness.

 

But that is not all a portrait is. If that is all you needed, take a snapshot.

 

But portraiture is more than simply conveying a likeness. It is also about identity. Which is not the same as likeness. This is where it gets hard. This is a person you love, but who is that person? What do they mean to you? What do you mean to them?

 

Painting someone you know and love can be fraught with all kinds of dangers. While as artist, we revel in each line and wrinkle, so we show beloved mother-in-law with all her (perceived) flaws for all the world to see? Or do we flatter, and thus paint a flawed portrait and to us a lie. Or do we paint them as we see them, with love, acceptance and forgiveness?