What is the Point of Portraiture in the Selfie Era?

Before anything else, I have always sucked at portraiture. So take everything that follows with a salt mine.

Weirdly, if you think about it, though, a greedy lion’s share of my work could be said to be portraiture, although I have never once thought of myself as a portraitist.

But like all my recent posts that have been just, reactions, basically, to what’s been going on in jillaworld, I thought I’d share a thought or two about portraiture and why doing it the slow, old fashioned, by-hand way is still worth trying to do in an age when you can just shoot people with your phone.

I mean photography was invented a bazillion years ago, but people still painted portraits and made busts of other people after that (although probably not as many). (I’m just writing off the top of my head, by the way; lazy jill’s not looking anything up.)
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So what has been going on in jillaworld to give rise to this post?

I can think of three things: ‘Art Party vol. 2’, ‘Uncle Titus’, and ‘Tempest in a Teapot’.

The second ‘art party’ I’m referring to was when a couple of friends came over one Friday afternoon with the object of fooling around with portraiture. One sat for the other and, well, this:

I was dead on my feet by the time these kids came over but I thought I’d take advantage of having a live sitter on a silver platter, as it were, and well, mine didn’t come out quite so well as hers:

Truth be told, I was so tired I ended up finishing it the next day off a photo (which is probably one reason it didn’t come out so good).

The second thing was my uncle ~ he came over from the States and asked me to draw him while he was here (although I ended up just drawing him from a photo he sent me, anyway).
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​Painting is easier than drawing

Believe me, painting my uncle would’ve been faaar easier but he really only wanted the pencil drawing, so… Truth be told again, the young artist who came over for the art party really only wanted to draw, too (or maybe she wouldn’t have come in white).

But I thought the point of having parties was to have fun, and honestly, I was exhausted and in no mood to suffer 😆 So we ended up painting and not that I’m a whole lot better at portraiture when I paint but, I rather wish I had painted my uncle, too.

Well actually I did, hahahahhaha:

You see he had originally asked me for a caricature which (believe it or not) was never really my thing nor my forte (please see the first sentence of this post).

Probably more believable would be the fact that the drawing of my uncle which you see here was actually attempt no. 3. The first two were dismal, ‘deluded artist’ renders which I freely confess I do actually produce sometimes because, again, see that first sentence 😅

My recent long-running frustration

The ‘tempest’ I referred to as the third incident that brought this jillablog post on was an acrylic and oil pastel painting I did for fun of my adorable, elfin little niece. See, my mom asked me a bazillion years ago to paint my brother’s kids as putti, but try as I might, I have just been insanely unsuccessful.

I’ve spent quite some time practising, that is, making studies of them until now the eldest is, what, seven? And this little pixie is about, three, I think. And now there’s a new little boy ❤️ These kids will be in uni by the time I get around to actually painting the bloody putti.

In any case, I have no idea why I just CAN’T seem to get this kid in particular right. Buuut if nothing else, I did have fun making this teapot ~ mainly I guess because it wasn’t planned x I just felt like doing it all of a sudden and ran with it. I didn’t even know I was going to put this poor kid in a teapot, it kind of just happened.

Doesn’t do her justice by a long shot (believe me she’s a lot cuter in person) (friskier, too).
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But fun isn’t the point of portraiture, is it?

I mean, not traditionally, anyway. The name of the classical game has always been likeness, however which way you spin it. Whether you trompe l’oeil down to the last pore or nose hair or you do it fast and loose Vincent style, the thing has to at least remind you of the sitter, right.

Again, I’m not looking anything up. But if I remember correctly (and I probably don’t), the classical or formal definition of portraiture says it’s got to be of someone who exists.

So that was the thing, I think, of my art school thesis (please excuse my ageing memory, it was over 20 years ago) ~ my thesis was monster portraiture and the thing was I was painting portraits of people who didn’t exist.

Of course I had to define monsters as people and all that (and stifle every last vestige of my belief in monsters as real, exist-like-you-and-me people) ~ but let me go on record here to say that it’s my sorry lack of skill that prevents me from calling myself a portraitist and not this (ie, painting people who (according to the academics or whoever) don’t exist).
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So here are a few thoughts I have on portraiture

I wouldn’t dream of giving advice or anything because like I said (in the interest of transparency-slash-full disclosure) I’m not in the least qualified to give any.
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1. There’s likeness, and there’s lifelike.

I had a classmate in art school who I heard, some time ago, was now making a living as a portrait painter, and I remember she said that one of her clients kept sending her work back because she wasn’t able to ‘capture the client’s spark’ or something like that.

My classmate was ranting like, ‘what does that even mean’ or ‘how in the h— do you even paint that’. I never saw the portrait in question, but my guess for what it’s worth is that she was able to achieve likeness, but the portrait didn’t seem (for lack of a better term) to live, somehow.

I guess, one way I can explain it is taking a mugshot of someone while his brain is on cruise control, versus taking that mugshot while he’s thinking about the person who got him arrested in the first place. Even if he wasn’t smiling or had the same deadpan expression in both photos, I imagine his eyes would look different.

So maybe my classmate got a picture-perfect ‘cruise control mugshot’ but yeah. Maybe it could’ve been more alive, I don’t know.
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2. Nothing beats painting from life.

I was telling the kids at the three-person art party that even back in the day (I’m talking almost 40 years ago) live models cost both arms and both legs, and that live sitters are pretty hard to come by for folks like me. (I’m just lucky the monsters I’ve painted were kind enough to humour me.)

Of course I was talking about figure drawing models just now, but I did also mean sitters for portraits in general. It’s true photos will never move or need to go to the bathroom and you can take your own sweet time (and make second and third attempts or studies or whatever).

But there’s just something different when you have your sitter smack dab in front of you ~ I think the time factor has something to do with it.

In figure drawing we’re trained to, you know, capture as much as we can in literal seconds. Plus there’s that whole, model’s gotta scratch, sneeze, stretch and so on.

But I think the good thing about that is you don’t dilly dally and you go straight to all the most important stuff, to get those down before the sitter’s back gives out. Personally I think it makes for a purer portrait (whatever that means, lol).

It’s like, if you do a portrait from a photo you’re like a human photocopier (no pun intended). If you do a portrait from life you’re a human camera. (I’m sorry, not ‘human’, monster, I mean 😉)

When you photocopy something, you, make a copy. When you take a photo of something you capture it. I hope you know what I mean; I don’t know how else to say it.

It might help if I mention that when that uncle of mine asked me to draw him he said he wanted to know how I saw him. I at once grasped the validity of that statement, and almost immediately assumed he was going to sit for me. Then he sent me a photo, lol.

Well, I know it ain’t much but I did my best. In the words of (movie) Frodo, ‘Sorry, Uncle. I’m afraid I lost it.’
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3. To know, or not to get to know.

I was also telling my art party guests how some artists take at least a little time to get to know their sitters first before they paint them. Others don’t want to do this and prefer to view the process as a purely technical exercise. (So the focus for the latter might be likeness rather than ‘living’.)

It came as no surprise to me that my guest’s portrait came out so well because I reckon she knew her sitter better than anyone. While I opted to take the easy route (paint vs pencils) I did view the whole thing as a purely technical exercise, but overestimated the amount of energy I had which wasn’t nearly enough for that sort of thing.

Oddly, I think to do something ‘purely technically’, or purely with your brain takes more juice than doing something ‘with your gut’ or ‘with feels’ mixed in.

Maybe that’s why some artists like to get to know their sitters first, even if they talk for just a minute or two before the session. Makes things easier. For the sitters, too (because they might be more at ease or feel even a little less awkward).
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So what, for me, matters most when it comes to portraiture ~

~ what the point of it is now, when, yeah. You want attempts nos. 2, 3, 4, or more (in love land for me and my gal)? Today’s phones let you snap a bazillion of those in one go.

So you know what I said ~ and you’ve seen how I’m not exactly the poster girl for portraiture in the classical, traditional, or pretty much any sense. And I’m probably only about to say this because, skills (ie, my lack thereof).

But for me what matters most really when it comes to portraiture is the ‘alive’ part ~ like it’s not just about likeness, even if that’s arguably the most important part. But for me a good portrait captures what the sitter is like, like ‘let me guess, you have a great personality’ 🦙🤪

This may be selfish but maybe what matters is what the artist, and not the sitter nor the viewer, gets out of the process, which is getting to know the sitter in a way that, well I won’t say ‘goes beyond’ (but I did, for lackuvabetter) ~ but I guess I will say a different, subtler-slash-deeper way.

Like you know how in anime a person will fight or spar with somebody and ends up understanding them or knowing them better, even if they don’t talk? Of course, talking is better than nothing, and there’s that whole ‘actions speak louder’ thing, too.

I can’t quite explain it, but painting a sitter and that whole ‘going straight to the most important stuff’ thing really gives you insight into what a person is like, maybe even better than if you talked to the sitter or maybe you don’t even know or ever even hung out with this person.

And maybe that’s why some artists prefer to not get to know their sitters beforehand ~ because they’ll get to know the sitter, anyway ~ and probably in a way that matters more.

So it’s not a purely technical-slash-likeness only thing for them, after all, either.
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What a good (and a better) portrait is (for me, anyway)

So this is long now, again, and I am sorry, but in wrapping this up, I would like to say something about how great photographers who do portraits are able to capture the ‘living’ aspect, too.

Like anybody specially these days can take a photo, right, but the really good photographers? Like the really good painters (or draughtsmen, or sculptors, or anybody who can make a good portrait), their work is alive, has that ‘spark’, that ‘spirit’.

Not just pure likeness or mugshots, you know?

Like that aboriginal belief in photos possibly being able to steal part of a person’s soul. I think good portraits should be able to do that, too, somehow.

But a better portrait would take that one step further and actually go on to tell a story about the sitter. And again, that might monkey around with the definition of a portrait, because if the sitter is doing something in the painting then that probably counts as a genre painting rather than just a straight-up portrait.

Sitters in portraits should basically just, well, sit there, right?

But then again ~ one, why classify or box art into neat little textbook definitions, and two, aren’t we supposed to make the best art (whether that’s a portrait, a genre painting or whatever) we can? If you’re like me, you’d at least like to think you’re doing your best, even if what you’re making isn’t your best work (the balyana under the title in this post sure as heck isn’t (not your fault, honey, so sorry) ~

~ but I think as artists (portraitists or not) we should always be trying to be better.

​What do you think?

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