If you had a giant fine-art portrait of yourself, what would you do with it?

I guess I wouldn't mind a portrait if I wasn't the only one in it. Having one up of myself would make me feel strange I think.

I have pictures of all kinds of people around the house. I love seeing all the dear, sweet faces. My paintings are all people free though...for some strange reason. Never thought of it before.

yikes

Well, it just goes to show you that we should pay artists more. It's really sad when an artist can't say no.

I wouldn't mind having a portrait of myself (in younger years) hanging somewhere in my house. I wanted to take a beautiful black and white picture
of my daughter, enlarge it to poster size, and hang it up in the living room.
She (daughter) refused to see a large picture of herself, but maybe I'll reconsider when she's off to college and out of the house

I don't blame her. She's a sensible young lass.

So, I couldn't find a photo of that big painting of me done in the seventies, might not have ever had one. In retrospect, I could have accepted the painting, taken it off the stretcher and kept the canvas rolled up..

Did find a strange self portrait that I never hung in house or studio since I don't like it - probably 18 x 24


Here's that big painting of Women in Palisades Park that I mentioned - I think you either enjoy something like this in your living room or run away shuddering.. (the piano and the painting are the same, but the house and placement are different, can't find that photo)


The original photo of the women -


Some more of that series since I just put them on photobucket

Cardplayers
Palisades Park
(dark photo)


Shuffleboard in the Park (also a dark photo scan)

Oh wow! Wonderful to see, Osso! Really really nice.

I do like parts of the self portrait too, the hair especially.

But I love those park scenes... thanks so much for posting them.

you know, looking around on the internet, I really don't like those portraits that someone paints from a picture.

seems they usually end up looking pretty tacky.

I guess if you used a photo to give you the spark of an idea, but those portraits that try to make you look just like you did in the foto....why bother?

I remember watching Gone With the Wind for the first time as a little girl.

This portrait of Scarlett was in the movie, and I remember thinking how marvelous it was.

I think in the book she had a portrait of herself at the head of the grand staircase.

Yeah, I know what you mean. This was a graphite pencil drawing though, a little different (he usually used live models, I think the photo was somehow part of the assignment? small photo --> large drawing.)

Tried to find something in the style -- note, THIS IS NOT IT. It's just something I found online. It's vaguely similar, especially in terms of the hair. But the focus and scale are different, especially in terms of how much light/ dark and how much smudge/ detail (the drawing I'm talking about is lighter and more detailed).

The odd thing about the Shuffleboard painting - portrait in a fashion, even though the folks are facing toward the court or whatever you call it in shuffleboard - is that the three middle women are in many ways my mother at different times. (That's one I'd could enjoy buying back).

On the hair in the self portrait of myself as a blond (color for the painting more than anything about me who has never been blond), blond with a red neck and hard stare - that's the one and only time I used one of those fan like brushes... sort of cheating and too detail-y for me.

There's another painting of me lying around here somewhere (garage?) done by my cousin who is a year older than I am and was an actual art major at university - she's always been gifted at drawing and only better with schooling. I think it was of me lying down on a couch in a caftan type thing reading a book. I think of it as "Woman with Glasses and Ugly Outfit". But it's been so long now, urgh, fifty years, that I should drag that out and photograph it. To give you an idea, I never framed it..

I've hung some of my paintings of loved ones... this is me, my friend Leslie (the fisherman), my son and ex (not really a portrait), and me and my son (15 yrs ago).










And then there's THIS one - lol - me and my sisters:

I like that photo.

Know what Chai means, re some portraits from photos.

I'm tempted to put up a few links re some artists that I enjoy and their portrait
work (I mean besides some famous painters.. but some are related to my old galleries - while I'm unrelated to them now).
And of course that's even more of a tangent than the present ramblings of mine.


As long as you're interested, here's a wrong-color photo of the Women in the Park - the painting in memory is somewhere between the colors in the two photos, closer to the one with the piano in the room.


The three I've shown have faults, starting with that I didn't get perspective back then and moving along to other faults - but there were two more with more faults. Here's one -
Kelly in front of "Woman with Pigeon"

and no immediate pic of the other.


So, it seems like two questions to me - do you like portrait painting at all, and, if so, what kinds, and.... would you show one of yourself in your house.

That was in the absurdly vulgar house she created after she married Rhett, I believe?




If I were Sozobe, I would love to have a beautiful portrait of me.

I'm with the "quietly let the owner know you'd love it if she ever wishes to part wioth it" and I'd put it where I damn well liked.

I have a couple of friends with really interesting portraits of themselves on prominent display, and I really enjoy them.

My friend who has had both her breasts removed had a nude done of herself before surgery, to celebrate her lovely breasts. It hangs in her bedroom at present.

Ooooh. Like the one of you and son bestest. The one with your sisters is a kick.
(I don't have a photo of the one of my three friends dancing, got to do that.)

Ok, we so agree. Brave friend, brave friend doing that as part of the process (to speak in jargon yet again while not meaning to).

I've done a large painting of a very pregnant model (hell, I took advanced figure painting six times, which is good for production if not art). By the sixth time I was painting the whole room full of people fast on a large canvas, not a bad exercise.

Next question, what is a portrait?

Looking at Mame's again, I love the one of her and son...

Yes, because that what Scarlett was, absurdly vulgar.

That house described Scarletts dilemma to a T.
She had convinced herself she wanted to fit into genteel society. But, Scarlett related to Rhett on their honeymoon what Mammy has said to her..."She said we could give ourselves airs and get ourselves all rigged up and we were like race horses and we were just mules in horse harness and we didn't fool anybody."

although, I don't think the portrait is vulgar in itself, just in the context of the house.

My not quite immediate family was involved with that movie (and so what? well, a lot back then, but I wasn't born yet, and some family stuff went barreling downhill.) Me, I take that as a vogue page.. though sometimes vogue pages are nifty. But, slick. I suppose I don't like 'slick' much.

When there was a will contest between my aunt's neighbor and me (shuts self up) - I got the pickings (me with the holographic will, and neighbor having dragged aunt to an attorney a few days before she died after said neighbor took her away..).

So, never mind, all that was a long time ago. But the vulture neighbor missed a few things, including original gone with the wind costume drawings.

I got to go through the house as the lawyered will contestant. The steel box with family history gone. The fur coat, never an interest for me, gone.
My own expensive quilt for my sleeping over, gone. The silver, gone. The Burkenstaph (bad spelling) painting, gone.

I pointed to a few things in the presence of the bank administrator and got them. Well, so much else gone, it was lame. And then I called my cousins and told them the choices. They spent part of their childhood with her not quite as much as I did but not, not.

So, all these years later, Patty has the costume drawings.. well framed.



Oddly, I don't care much about Gone with the Wind. It's the family drama that amuses.

I was kerplotzed, I just wanted my aunt to be well. But the machinations, including from my aunt who lived in near isolation.. were the stuff of bad short stories. I've later learned that just about no one was at fault, at least not entirely, way of the world.

I know this is a tangent, but it interests me - and those costume drawings are still prominent.