Painting a Portrait

Today, I painted in three big chunks of time. The family that I'm doing a portrait for is coming by tomorrow to see it. They loved it the last time and had just a few minor changes. As I started making those small adjustments yesterday, I started seeing all the things wrong with it. By this afternoon, I had completely painted out both faces and started again.

By 5:30, I felt suicidal. Not that I wanted to kill myself entirely, just the grandiose part of me that ever thought I could be a portrait painter. I wanted to take her out back and throttle her for her stupid notion that she could actually paint! From a month ago when I had a painting that the family rather liked, I had taken the thing apart to the point that the girl had eyes the size of one of those pound puppies usually painted on velvet. Her brother looked like Liberace on Valium. Who did I think I was anyway saying yes to this commission a year ago?

Thank God I have a dog. He began to bark having not been out for nearly 8 hours because I had become the self-absorbed, obsessed painter I can be. And now I was a suicidal, obsessed painter. With every change I made, the painting continued to fall apart. So doing the only thing I could think of worth doing, I got my biggest brush and lots of tinted white and painted over her face...again.

Why is it that painting is often fifty percent scraping away or painting over? Why is it that at least half a tube of paint dries on the palette or ends up in the turp bucket? No wonder Vermeer only has 16 extant paintings hanging around for a lifetime of work. Painting is often about repainting—especially when trying to get a likeness.

So this is what the session after dinner resulted in. It was like the self-assured portrait painter was murdered during supper at the White Cottage. A veggie burger and fried mushrooms nourished the humble self. I walked in the studio at 9 PM and by 11 had something I feel comfortable showing these people tomorrow. It is not perfect, but it has a bit of the Dutch Masters like Franz Hals who I fell in love with at the Rijksmuseum in 1977. And it has enough David Hockney colors and Edvard Munch psychology to satisfy me. I got out of the way, cleaned my brushes and went to work doing my honest best.

Oddly, after what felt like a complete break down six hours ago where I was sure I would never paint again, tonight I'm wondering who I might know who would like to sit for my next portrait? Van Gogh might have lived a longer life had he just gone to the White Cottage and ordered a veggie burger.