An observant reader will noticed that nearly two years passed between our first 'paid' gig and the next portrait-painting session. That reader might further discern the fact we did five sessions in a couple of weeks. I think we overdid it. Painting portraits in words is first and foremost a business venture, but it also has a kind of spiritual quality, where Stella has to channel all the spruikers who ever came before her, and I have to tap into the great reservoir of how to describe faces. We can certainly flog our wares, but we can't flog them too often, or our fonts will dry up.
Our 'paid' gig also had some fatal flaws - people were all dressed up in their art-opening clothes, and art-opening manners, and art-opening make-up, and when they sat down in front of me, wreathed in their social smiles, I wanted to snap at them: "Can you just be real for five minutes!" It wasn't a situation conducive to still and natural faces, and a pall of resentment slowly crept over me.
I've put Amanda's up here as it is the most uninspired and scraping-the-bottom-of-the-imagination portrait I've done. No fault of Amanda's. I was having portrait-painter's burn-out.
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