PORTRAIT BUSINESS LAUNCH

As of this fall, 2020, I am officially starting a portrait painting business. This is a long overdue endeavor. Over the years since I graduated, I had done some commissioned portraits, but I never really sought them out. It was actually a pretty confusing process for me and I never really knew how to go about it. I knew how to paint portraits, but I seriously lacked the business and people skills to go about the process efficiently.

Im not sure if it was becoming a parent, spending years honing my people skills while bartending and serving, or just getting older in general, but I finally feel like Ive worked out a system that is pain free for both the client and me. Im also really excited to do some portraits on a smaller scale. Ive traditionally always done medium to large scale portraits and while they can be really amazing to do, they take a lot longer. The image here is a 12 x 12 inch portrait of my son Harry. Something this size is great if someone was looking for multiple portraits of their family members, but not necessarily one huge painting with multiple people in it. I remember going to my grandparents house when I was young and there were 6 framed 11 x 14-ish pastel portraits of my mom and all her siblings hanging along the wall going down the stairs. In fact, I plan to do 3 more of the little square portraits of myself, my husband, and my other son Riley (maybe a 5th one of our bunny, Beaux, because I can do pet portraits too!).

Im very excited to start this because portraits are actually super on trend right now. Ive seen a lot of different artists during contemporary portraits that have these patterned and floral backgrounds (think that portrait of President Obama done by artist Kehinde Wiley) and Ive always been into graphic art or pop art for backgrounds. this is the perfect time for me to start this—portraits and figurative painting are making a huge resurgence and painting the figure is my passion.