Category: Portraits 159 images (Page 1 of 6)
(153 Images; 6 pages). Amusingly enough, my first book commission (in 1996 or so?) required an eyepopping FIFTY, pen & ink portraits of North Carolina authors. As I recall, I was promised (which is a radically different thing from actually being paid, particularly when you’re dealing with small publishers) $1,000 for the job. I ended up being paid in furniture (which I didn’t mind…and all of which I still have). After that?…I found myself being commissioned by a lot of newspapers, book reviews (we still had them back then), and magazines for portraits….and I went from continuously writing about authors to continuously drawing them (which is easier and, frankly, pays better). These days, I do a lot of commissioned portraits…probably my favorite work. Many of these are memorial portraits (don’t ask me how such clients find me out. I do know that I don’t find myself being commissioned for silly vanity-projects; presumably, those clients go elsewhere). It’s an odd, but gratifying, sensation to enter so fully into one particular aspect of the life of a person I’ve usually never met (yes…I do work from photographs).
