Could you imagine if all sculptors portrayed the minute scars on a mans body, or the stretch marks on a woman’s legs? Would these aspects portray the truth about humanity?

Artists create to praise mans beliefs, ideals, and goals in life. Art is a representation of pride, intellect, joy, sorrow, happiness loneliness and above all beauty. It does not have to be a real representation to portray any of these feelings, it should only portray them to the best of its ability.

Art is reason, reality and life, it does not matter what the setting, context or even whether it is historically accurate or not, so long as the meaning is understandable.

It does not even have to be a certain type of art movement. It can be fantasy art, digital art, modern art, neo classical, it only needs to speak to the human soul and represent our wonderful humanity.

One of the most striking aspects about charcoal art is that it is completely devoid of color. Thus, within the limited constraints of black and white, the portraitist has to express his subject. In fact the French painter Odilon Redon rebelled against the predominant impressionism of those times. He was of the idea that society curtailed natural phenomena. He consciously chose to work with pencil and rendered black and white paintings as his way of rebelling against the dull reality of color in real life. Having a fascination for the morbid and the menacing, many of Redon’s paintings contained creatures like insects, amoeboid creatures, as well as plants containing human heads. Through his paintings, this revolutionary portrayer served to refute the standard differentiation between ugly and beautiful.

A depth of meaning

If you consider the works of James Drake, all of his works were done in charcoal and served to represent the looming and gloomy image of war. For example, in his painting the War in Heaven he has patched and taped various animals and birds such as hawks, gazelles, insects of giant proportions etc. In this painting, the portraitist has tried to showcase the ‘patched up’ nature of memory. Just like one’s memory which gets torn, weathered and repaired once again, this work too depicts a melancholic and dramatic effect. Portrait artists who have depicted work in black and white have managed to convey a far deeper meaning in their paintings as compared to colored paintings.

There is lot of things an artist will envision while looking at a subject before drawing it. The final outcome of the painting will depend a lot on the style of the painting as well as the subject of choice. The art needs to highlight the positive aspects and characteristics of the subject, even if it is an inanimate object like a book or a flower. Thus if an artists sees the colors of the rainbow in the petals of a rose, he will need to portray his creativity in such a way as to go beyond the defined forms of the flower. Thus the final painting will depict much more than the natural form of the flower. That is, it will not only show the petals, leaves and thorns but a finer depth and character of the flower which could portray a deep emotion or a feeling through the painting.

As far as the pop art scene in America goes, food seems to have been given a central importance. It represents a major outlet for spending income, while also doubling as a leisure and fun time activity. Thus, the emphasis on bottle feeding as opposed to breast feeding in America! From French fries, to burgers, cakes and beer – food has remained an all time favorite inspiration with American pop culture portrait artists.

Portrait artists create portrait paintings while drawing inspiration from real life objects and persons around them. However, what adds to their significance is the ability to extend and twist common aspects of regular life. Most of the time, such painters tend to depict a painting based on their own interpretation of a particular subject. So while the muse maybe a woman with a mandolin, the outcome of the portrait maybe very different. In the final painted portrait, aspects which traditionally were the most valued aspects of the portrait, such as the facial expression of the woman being portrayed, may be the least important part of a modern portrait. It all depends on the personal perspective of the artist.

A good example of this is Picasso’s woman with mandolin, painted in 1910. Traditional artists depict objects & people from one viewpoint. Cubist artists paint objects & people from different perspectives to represent them from different angles. Cubist artists first analyze the subject. Afterwards they break it up and re-assemble it in an abstract form. This way, the subject can be viewed from different perspectives.

The extent of an artist’s creativity depends on the degree of non-adherence to standard boundaries. For example, the subject of a painting could be the face of a woman. An artist, by looking at the subject in a different light, is able to capture in the final painting a dimension which goes beyond what one could see by simply looking at the face of the woman. Though the painting, the artist can express the woman’s thoughts, her dreams, her illusions, the feelings that arise in her heart and many other matters.

For example, the painting of this woman transmits to me a man thinking or dreaming about his beloved woman, who is no longer there. The blurred painting transmits to me that the woman is not real, that she is not there. She is in somebody’s mind so she could be a thought or a dream. It is a close up portrait, so that means that the woman is or has been very close to the man. Her melancholic look and the choice of the colors used by the artists transmit to me the mood of the person (probably the artist) who is thinking of her. He misses her very much.

This is what the artist transmits to me with this painting. Others will see other matters. An artist will use different techniques to portray what he or she wants. His/her success will be measured, to a great extent, on how the portrait effectively transmits his/her feelings to the observer and what kinds of feelings arise in the audience.