Bentley Brooks Fine Oil Portraits

Why Paint?

We live in a high-tech world in which practically everyone has access to a camera with user friendly photo-editing software and convenient photographic services. Today's smart phones (right) can provide all of this in the palm of your hand! We are constantly bombarded by an array of photos, videos and animations. Is there any place in our modern world for traditional portrait painting? And does a hand-painted portrait offer any advantages over a good photograph?

I would like to explore with you several ways in which I believe a quality oil portrait painting is superior to a photograph. There is certainly a need for good photography, and you must evaluate whether or not you would be better served with a good photograph instead of a painted portrait. There is certainly quite a cost

difference! Even though photography and painting have a lot in common with respect to the perceptive mind of the artist, I believe each of the two art forms has a different ideal or purpose. Following is a list of four key advantages which I believe portrait paintings have over photographs:

I. Composition and Control
Good portraits rely on good composition. With photography it can be very difficult to capture every interesting element and completely control all aspects of the image, especially when several persons (or children) are involved. However, when painting a portrait the artist has much more control over all the elements. Certain qualities or features of the subject can be enhanced or downplayed, and adjustments can be made throughout the painting process as the portrait develops.

II. Pigment Quality Pigments give paints, inks and dyes their unique color and vary greatly in quality and cost. The oil paints that I use for my portraits are of the highest quality available. Pigments used in professional quality oil paint are superior to the dyes used to produce a colored photograph. In addition to superior color quality, the oil paint pigment is suspended in an oil medium which also leads to much greater luminosity as illustrated. Multiple glazes of paint layers can be built up to create a beautiful, luminous glow that cannot be achieved with a photographic dye. This difference can be easily seen when viewing an oil painting and photograph side-by-side. For this reason a copy of a painting is never as good as the original! And a photographic print can never achieve the richness or luminosity of an oil painting.
		Here you can see the light beams bouncing multiple times through the oil layers, off oil membranes and off the colourful pigments. This bouncing gives oil paintings their distinctive luminous glow. (Source)

This is also why I prefer to not paint a portrait directly from a reference photograph --- the reference image is only as good as the dye on the paper! And photographic prints are notorious for not completing capturing all of the light information from the subject, especially detail and color information in the shadow areas. Painting from life is ideal but often impractical, especially when an unusual pose or expression is desired or children are involved. This is why in traditional portraiture the subject is never smiling! So I prefer to compromise by working from digital camera images displayed on a high resolution LCD monitor. By referencing an LCD monitor image I am very nearly viewing the actual light coming off the subject, as opposed to viewing the light reflected off the inferior dyes of a photographic print. This leads to much more realistic and vibrant colors when painting. The next time you print a digital image, compare the physical print of that image to the image on your computer screen and note the difference!

III. Longevity
Color photographic materials are impermanent and are by nature unstable due to the chemical and physical properties of the dyes used. Even when in dark storage and enclosed in the proper archival materials, deterioration is unavoidable. Typical photographs can begin to fade after only 10 years, and even the best archival quality photographs will fade after 100 years. In contrast, oil paintings have withstood the test of centuries and have been around far longer than acrylics or photographic dyes. Oil paintings make great heirlooms! Consider the quality of the colors in the painting "On the Terrace" painted by French Impressionist Renoir in 1881.

IV. Artistic Impression
For me painting in a realistic way does not mean trying to duplicate what a photographer can do. That would be a waste of time, as the camera can deliver so much more detail and precision than I ever could. A good portrait should show the subject's deeper qualities as interpreted by the artist. That impression should be filled with the painter´s own emotions and will give not only a more or less accurate account of the subject, but also a glimpse of the artist´s character. The Irish poet Oscar Wilde put it this way:

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

I believe the individuality and unique perspective a portrait artist brings to the canvas to be one of the most intriguing and interesting aspects of portrait painting. We all see things differently, and I find trying to capture a person's essence with paint and brush strokes to be a profound, personal experience.

For the reasons outlined above I believe portrait painting will never be obsolete and has several advantages over photography. Seeing is believing, and I hope you have the opportunity to view and inspect a high-quality oil painting. It really is true, a picture is worth a thousand words!