7" x 5" - oil/panel

Private Collection

From the Oil Painter's Journal: Eye Candy This is one of my "miniatures" and measures 7" x 5". It clearly shows why I prefer painting from life and what is missing in working from photographs. Artists call it temperature or hue -- moving around the color wheel through the rainbow -- the relationship between the warm (the yellow-orange) and the cool (blue-green) colors. Look at the flesh tones in the lit areas of the face and you see yellows and reds and cool undertints: a reason for painting. A photograph would most likely represent these nuances as a single and colorless light tone. The same with the darks: they are filled with violets and maroons and browns: rich and descriptive shadows. If you see a painting with black or colorless darks it almost certainly was painted from a photograph. Even amateurs see plenty of color in shadows. I probably should mention that it also helps to have a nice looking subject to begin with but the best thing about this tiny painting was the hair. There's nothing a portrait artist like more than to paint the highlites on shiny curls of blond hair.