Painted in 2004 at 16 by 20 inches. Some paintings seem to paint themselves. Others make you pull your hair out. This portrait of Julia provided both experiences. The landscape, the dog and the main part of Julia's figure were a breeze — the head and face were aggravatingly difficult. In fact, I finished it twice. The first face was an abject failure as portraiture goes. I generally have little trouble capturing the likeness of my subject and can devote most of my energies to developing composition and coloring and such. With this painting I bit off a bit more than I could chew. Or maybe, to make a really bad metaphor of it, I didn't bite off nearly enough to be able even to chew on it?
The painting, you see, is just too darn small. The canvas is twenty-one inches tall, and I had agreed with my patron to paint all the elements that you now see rendered therein; landscape, dog and the full figure of her daughter, Julia. I don't know what I was thinking. The head is a mere three inches tall. At that scale, everything has to be in place to the exact millimeter or the likeness is destroyed. In fact, having redrawn her facial features a dozen times, and having not successfully captured that unique Julia-ness I searched for, I decided to call it quits, and I handed the painting over to my patron. It seemed I had met my match.
Ellen (my patron) knew that I could do better, so she asked me just to touch up the side of her face. "Maybe if you were to round out the cheek a little bit, it would look more like Julia," she suggested. I agreed that, after the paint dried, I would take another crack at it. But I knew I couldn't just touch it up. I had totally flumoxed the thing. The entire head had to be sanded off. I took sandpaper (oh so carefully!) to my painting and removed the head. And then I repainted it.
That must be the scariest thing I have done in painting. I'm not exactly sure why I believed I could do any better on my second try. But through yet more aggravating struggle, encouraged by my wife and bolstered by prayer, I did do better — much better. I am at last very excited with how it turned out. However, I'm never (ever ever) again going to accept a portrait commission for a three inch tall head.
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