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WHAT I BELIEVE ABOUT PORTRAIT PAINTING:
1.) You are beautiful; and
2.) Love can go into the painting; just like love can go into cooking: sometimes you can feel it, looking at the picture, just like sometimes people claim they can taste their mother's love in her cooking.
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HOW TO OBTAIN A PORTRAIT:
Email me at sbtheresa@yahoo.com to order a portrait, and we can talk about the subject, when you need it by (I'd like to have at least three weeks' notice), and pricing. I can help you with everything!
PRICING
Standard 8 x 10 single subject: starts at $300
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9/18/08 ~
Hi! My name is Sarah Sheehan, and I'm twenty years old. I have always loved drawing people! Everyone is beautiful, and I want to say, "YOU are beautiful; I see that beauty and I want to draw it out." It is so much more about the soul in the face, than about the line of the eye. (Of course, you have to capture both, if you want to get a person!)
This is why I have trouble with mass-producing portrait businesses; not because they are making art commercial (I am doing that, too!) but because if the artist is only troubling about the mechanics of the body, the result will be mechanic: lifeless. You can paint a plant that way. But I love to capture personality in the people, to the best of my ability. I want the spirit to shine through. I want to show, "This person is beautiful," and make you believe it, too!
But as I find myself doing photo realism (if you're not sure, it is the drawing of a realistic portrait from a photograph), here is my problem... there is a removal between the artist and the subject. (I think I'm always going to struggle with this!) I usually don't know the subject, but I don't want to paint just the physical. I want some spirit connection! Maybe I should just give up on that, while doing online portraits... But maybe not. Maybe it doesn't have to be all commercial, all technique. When filling out your order form, you can tell me something about the people in the picture, if you want. Of course, I never want to "impose" on a painting my own preconceived notions about a picture: I want to only paint what is there, what I see. But I've always said that I draw a painting better when I know a little bit about the person.
So, in conclusion... what is an artist, anyway?
Sometimes he is a creator of beauty... but most of the time (as in portrait painting) he is a vehicle, a medium: an unveiler of beauty.