WIP: Blossoms from The Same Garden

“Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”
John Singer Sargent quotes (Italian Painter and Artist, 1856-1925)

As I come to the "home stretch" on this WIP - a portrait of my oldest friend and her sister - I fiercely hope Sargent's sentiment does not prove to be true in my case! I am painting this to be a gift for her birthday, next month. A challenge on several fronts: working from a photo is never desirable... but a flash photo is truly the dregs. And the full-tooth smiles certainly don't make for a classic portrait pose. But... I know that the photo I used as reference is one of her favorites, capturing a special moment and an irreplaceable, cherished relationship. So the die was cast: this would be the image reference.

I replaced the dinner plates and wine glasses with my friend's favorite flowers: white tulips. (Still have quite a bit of work left to do on those and on the vase). I also tried to reduce the effect of the flash... but here I feel I have not been successful. I don't feel satisfied with the depth of atmosphere. Most of the portraits I have done (of people, at least!) have been painted from life. Tthe fundamental difference between painting from a three-dimensional subject actually in front of you, complete with actual air and space, and a two-dimensional one on a piece of paper, is that in the photograph, perspective and spacial relationships have already been captured (by the camera). A painter must make decisions on what to include from what s/he sees. When painting from life, one never really looks at a subject from the exact same angle in any given glance, so there's an amount of perspective interpretation that's impossible when painting from a photograph. The end result is, of course, what matters most, but for me, the experience is completely different - and less satisfying when the project must be done only from photos.