Courtney and friend

[Patricia Joyce]

Shw turned out real sweet, Mike!!

[Mike McCarty]

Chris and Linda,

Thank you artful ladies of Phoenix. With all the heat stress you've endured lately it's a wonder you've got strength enough to type.

LAERTES :

O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt,
Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye!
By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight,
Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May!
Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!

Patricia,

I takes one to know one.

[Lisa Ober]

What a grand finish. I enjoyed watching the process as well. Lovely colors you ended up with, don't you agree? Yes, indeed (thought I would answer that for you).

[Mike McCarty]

Thank you LIsa,

I did this painting for myself so I was able to experiment more than I would have ordinarily. Besides all the different backgrounds that I fumbled with there is also a wide variance of skin texture. Her face being smooth with the perimeter edge being the sharpest. The rest being slightly out of kilter with no hard edges. And then the background was done with a palette knife.

As I look at it I think I got close to my objective but did not reach it completely. One might argue that these divergent styles create a lack of cohesion.

One thing I learned is that I need to learn more about color temperature. It's good to know that you know things, but to discover what you don't know is even more important. Most of the time I don't even know what I don't know (I'm beginning to sound like Donald Rumsfeld). Trying to resolve the different temperature issues was a good learning experience for me.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Hi Mike,

It's been so interesting watching your progress on this painting. The result is really lovely. I am so glad you changed the background color. It really works! And you have captured that tender, chubby quality of your daughter without any corniness.

Alex

[Mike McCarty]

Thank you Alexandra,

I did like the slightly vulnerable look, however, this is not my daughter. My daughter is now twenty years old and off to college, sigh .

This is my daughter on the morning of her first day of school, also looking a little vulnerable.

[Tricia Migdoll]

Mike, How lovely.!!

I am so pleased Chris brough this back to the top so I could see it.

[Mike McCarty]

Thank you very much Tricia.

[Michele Rushworth]

I am drawn to those images which bring a less than cute, singular emotion to the viewer. It must be something that I subconsciously press for at the time I photograph the subject. I like it most when a story can be told in a tight compact space. Almost everything I do is through intuition.

This is exactly what I mean when I encourage aspiring portrait artists to take their own photos and not copy client snapshots, or, even worse, commercial studio photos. You're bringing a big part of "you" to the work by taking your own photos. What we paint is more important than howwe paint it.