[email protected] long does it take YOU to paint a portrait?
 

Bouguereau is said to have completed a painting from conception to the last brush stroke in only 8 days.

I have long held a theory that states:

Success as an Artist equals Time at the Easel.

I think this is especially true for portrait artists as what we do is quite a bit more exacting than many other artistic fields.

Today, I underpaint an average head and shoulders portrait in between 6 to 9 hours. Three years ago, that number was more than 20 hours for the same work. To me, that reduction is due to "time at easel" - by myself, in classes, on commissions, etc.

The more time we put in at the easel, the more successful we become at making the difficult translation from eye to hand. I mean success in terms of our ability to render what we see, not our overall success in the art marketplace - though one hopes that there is some spillover certainly.

Our families are usually not thrilled by this theory...long hours, very hard work.

An oil portrait for me now takes between 3-5 weeks depending on its complexity. Someday, I would like to be able to approach eight days, but I am not holding my breath. :)

So, how long does it take you to paint a portrait from start to finish? Do some math. Does that effect your plan to make your living at portraiture?

Michael,

Along those lines, I think it is true that a person's level of success can be measured by the number of failures he/she has amassed. You have to risk and you have to fail.

There is a thread in the "Oil" critique section labeled "The Lookout". I had never kept track of my time until I started on this painting. The following remarks I pulled from that thread:

Great topic. I'm going to "punch the clock" for the painting I'm working on now, a portrait of my husband. The preliminary drawing took 2 hours (attached).

What I find is that it's best if I put it down after the first two hours, then sleep on it, and when I come back, I can clearly see any errors, weaknesses, etc.

Next I'll do a 2-3 hour oil color study, from life. (Two sittings.)

Anyway, one of the things I recognize about my process is that the time is not only consumed at the easel, but also the important time is spent IGNORING the piece so I can look at it with fresh eyes and scrape down or repaint where necessary, and it IS generally necessary to repaint passages, no matter how much time I've spent with the preparations.

Bottom line, it's good that I enjoy time at the easel :exclamati

Nice work Mari. I agree that there needs to be time away from a piece so you can see it with fresh eyes. I take little breaks - like this one here - for just a few minutes. Walk away, come back and sure enough you start seeing inconsistencies that need attention.

Mike, I agree, failures are part of the process and can be just as important as the successes. You certainly learn from them! :)

Time is on my side
 

I understand that time is money and we certainly need to pay our bills in a timely manner. That being said, I think to approach the creation of art as a function of time is not the road to success but the highway to **** (rhymes with bell), as far as artistic growth and success is concerned.

I know there are portrait artists that are very successful monetarily and may even have

Marvin,

I am sorry, but you missed my meaning entirely. My point was that success as an artist is entirely dependent upon spending as much time at the easel as possible. The easel is where it all happens - learning, development, rapidity, brilliance, etc.. Lord knows that there are so many things that keep us away from painting, from fear to family, etc.. My intent was to illustrate that time at the easel will make one a better artist and is, IMO, the best path to success as an artist.

Further, and to your reply, I had also observed that over time, I became faster (and better) at what I do. I never compromise on my works due to time constraints nor did I ever intend to imply that anyone should.

It was my intent, however, to clue newer artsists in that if they hope to do portraiture for a living, then they need to spend the time at the easel and develop not only their skill, but developing a fairly rapid pace would help too.

Eight days is a very rapid pace and does not impose at all on Bouguereau's repuation or work ethic. If anything, it enhances it.

It's not just an adventure, it's a job.

"Timely" Quote
 

Here's a quote from Art and Soul: Notes on Creating by Audrey Flack that I think applies.

"Grunewald spent years of his life on the Iseheim Alterpiece. Matisse's art appears to materialize in a moment. Only the appropriation and major shifts in the usage of time are different. The length of time it takes to make a work does not necessarily make it good. Conversely, the sponaneous and rapid production of a work does not make it good. Supremacy in art lies outside the realm of countable time."

I had observed that ultimately it comes down to the artist and his canvas. You can take tons of classes, sit in on lecture after lecture, view multitudes of paintings, BUT, until you actually stand there and put brush to canvas, and do it repeatedly hour after hour after hour, you cannot be successful as an artist. It takes a lot of time at the easel which is sometimes hard to do, but as artists we need to sacrifice time in order to train the eye and the hand in the degree of accuracy needed to produce realistic art.

Further, the fact remains that if an artist wants to take portraiture beyond the hobby stage, he will need to develop not only his skill, but his work ethic as well. Time at the easel will not only increase skill, but should also reduce the time it takes one to get a good result.

If you can create a well-crafted portrait in 8 days instead of 6 months, you have a much better chance of making portraiture work as a profession, not just a hobby.

Michael,

Around the studio, it was 10 to 14 days at 2 hours daily, to produce a good portrait head.

It isn't just pounding away at the easel, it's developing your individual way of "seeing" and then if what you have to say is universal and important enough to be worth preserving.

It need not be realistic or even well drawn, though this is the higher percentage.

Kim, Thanks for your response. I had no idea that this topic would be so controversial! I am afraid I have to disagree with your opinion above. To me, it IS about pounding away at the easel. That is where it all happens - successes, failures, learning and growth. To my mind, you not only have to learn to "see", but to translate what you see from your eye to your hand. You won't get that skill easily unless you are amazingly gifted, you put in a lot of hard work, or you paint abstract expressionism.

Whether works are worth preserving is not up to us, but to society. Given that society currently puts such value into Thomas Kincaid, I am not taking society very seriously - I am just having a lot of fun doing what I love. :cool:

Hope you are well.

People are always asking me "How long did it take you to do that?" I always answer very vaguely and usually with something like "Oh, months!", which is usually the time a painting has been in progress, from concept to delivery.

It has been my experience that potential clients (and that's just about everyone) want to know how long something took me so they can do some quick mental math about how much I would earn per hour and if my prices are reasonable on that basis. That's not how I price my work or how I want it to be perceived.

And, as someone pointed out, thinking time and time spent ignoring the work are as often as valuable as time in front of the easel when it comes to seeing what needs to be done to complete a piece properly.

If they ask me to be specific in terms of the hours I actually spent painting it I always say that I don't keep track.

Michael,

I have to apologize. I was thinking and responding strictly along the lines of studio philosophy.

I am very well, thanks for asking.

Okay, from a managerial standpoint, I'll put in my two cents about being aware of hours spent on a portrait. Some of you know I previously managed a portrait artist. One of the things we used was a log sheet of hours spent on each portrait. It wasn't to rush him needlessly, it was to have some idea how much time was actually spent on a portrait and how much he was making per hour. This included any hours planning, sketching, stretching and prepping the canvas, etc.

From there, we could evaluate whether all those hours were valid or not and what he could do, if anything, in the future to improve. Would it be cost efficient to train someone else to prep the canvases? Did he waste a lot of hours at the end fiddling needlessly because he really didn't want to let the portrait go?

That may seem to some to be a cold approach, but there was never any intention to short cut the quality of the portrait. We simply used a tool to help us make management decisions in the future.

Michael, somewhere in this Forum there is a post by Karin where she talks about putting in hours to really become a pro. Maybe it's the one called "So, you wanna be a pro?" If we could find that, it might address what you were originally talking about. But, I think this topic really spun off into a couple of different directions.

Politicians have learned that you don't have to answer the question that is asked. You give the questioner the information you want them to know. In other works, you control the conversation. Additionally, It helps to have pat answers for the awkward situations you find yourself in (usually centered on money issues).

If someone asks, "How long does it take to do a [this) painting," you answer, "I do about eight (twelve, twenty...) paintings a year."

If they ask, "How much do you charge," you say, "My prices begin at $1,000, ($5,000, $10,000)".

When it's time to get paid, you present the client with the bill, then you don't have to ask for payment.

The idea is to not get involved in rationalization (which usually leads into an apology) as to why you charge what you charge. No, "I've been studying for 10 years" or "A 3/4 is $4,000, but you can get a half figure with hands for $3,000...etc..."

Peggy

Time @ Easel
 

I thought Michael was saying that the time needed to execute a single given portrait can be expected to go down when the painter has had a great deal of hands-on practice over dozens, scores or hundreds of paintings leading up to the current portrait. In the main, I would agree. Practice has allowed me to improve my craft, just as practice does for the concert pianist, or the tennis player.

One thing I discovered for myself recently that reduces the time required to paint a portrait, and to paint a better portrait at that, is to get all the decisions made in one or more scaled-down preliminary color note(s). I don't know if it was Gerome who said it, but it was to the effect that he "never picked up his brush until he knew exactly what the painting was going to look like."

Ironically, I think I'm getting slower at painting portraits because I expect a much higher quality from myself than I did even six months ago. Taking the trip to NYC for the ASOPA conference this past May taught me how to see in a much more refined way. Because of that I think my recent portraits (whenever I get them sent to Cynthia for my SOG website!) will show what I think is a quantum leap in quality -- but not speed! Maybe once I absorb everything I learned into my work and it becomes second nature I'll start to be able to complete a commission in fewer hours, but for now I'm much slower than I was a year ago!

Michele,

Can you post some of your recent work on the unveilings section of this Forum?

My favorite is not quite done. Soon, I hope!

Ah, how long should a masterpiece take?
 

How long it takes you to paint any particular painting can vary greatly, depending on your style of painting.

If you paint in the classical style using a underpainting followed by many layers of color, then the very fact that oils take time to dry will add days to your process. If you are a wet-in-wet, or alla prima painter, then you actually try to finish a painting in one sitting. But of course, that does not count any preliminary sketches or reference gathering. And, of course, it also does not mean just because you try to finish in one sitting that you will. Even the great Sargent, as Marvin pointed out, had to paint areas over and over to get the effect he wanted, even though in looking at his work today, it looks as if he just laid down a single brush stroke and moved on.

Now I personally enjoy paintings of both styles and actually include some of both styles in my painting, as I start wet-in-wet, and may finish wet-on-dry. But I lean more toward a direct approach, and almost never do a monochromatic underpainting.

As for longevity of the piece of art based on how long it took to paint, I don't think there is any connection between the two. I could work for years on a failed painting and Richard Schmid could finish a masterpiece in one hour. I have a quote from an article about Richard Schmid. In this article he states, "I rarely go beyond three hours in painting a subject." Now the success of any painting like that style is not in how long it takes to paint that paintin, but in the hours of training that it took to be able to put down a stroke of paint so accurate in value, color and placement, that the first stoke is the final stroke needed to represent that area.

I personally like to use this analogy:

The advanced alla prima painter is like the advanced blues musician. For just as the blues artist strives to says more with a single note, the alla prima painter strives to says more with a single brush stroke. While to the uninitiated, blues music seems simple compared to classical music's complex arrangements, so does alla prima painting's loose brush work look simple compared to the more controlled and more tim-consuming classical style of painting. But anyone who has tried to play the blues can tell you there are years of practice behind that one note, and so it is with alla prima painting. There are many years of practice behind that one brush stroke. So I ask you this: is an alla prima painting worth less or does it have less an impact on the art world, just because it took hours instead of days to complete? Or does Muddy Water's "Mamie" have less feeling, or have less a lasting impact on the world of music because it uses a simple blues progression? After all it is not how long it took to create, but how well it speaks its meaning that matters.