Suggestion Vs Precision

More pronounced when doing portraiture is the issue of accuracy. I find myself torn between pleasing myself and pleasing my patron as well, even though they have picked my style of work seeing my other work. I hope to be able to forget that at some juncture but at this stage I still struggle with it.
Detail (precision), if addressed at all, is a few final touches even for Rembrandt. A suggestion is all that's needed. In portraiture however a likeness can be fractional adjustments to please almost anyone. I can make any landscape however I wish. Nobody can say the mountain is too tall or distorted but in a portrait even the most ignorant knows immediately that the eyes are too close together or the mouth is too narrow although they may not have the knowledge or vocabulary to explain why or what they see as wrong with a face. They know something is not quite right at a glance. We may be hardwired for that I suspect.
How far does one take precision and from my view, why go there once you understand the mechanics of it? Precision I feel is over rated. It's a challenge for a beginner but it's actually even more demanding to know when and how only a few suggestive brush marks and how to distill things to a suggestion that leaves room for the viewer to imagine the rest. A precise image may be devoid of the life that gesture and suggested detail can give the viewer. For that reason I always prefer working from more than a photograph. The photograph can be a tool but also a crutch leaving your work detailed but lacking nevertheless. There is often a lifeless quality to paintings from a photo unless the artist can overcome that dry fraction of time that most photos present you with.

Peter,

Rembrandt as a younger man was a fine painter. The Dutch Golden Age prized painters who did not leave a single brush stroke. As Rembrandt aged he became a rough painter.

The term fine artist may have come about because of the Dutch distinction of fine painter.

I am more concerned with Rembrandt's atmospherics. Those abstractions were impressive. I think most artists can not come close to those effects, so in my work I often leave the black or the white canvas alone. To answer your question now, leaving the canvas around the subject alone brings out the focus and detail of the subject.

Further, I purposely do not make ornamentation of detail like a painter might do. I break from that. My original concept was to transplant a figure from one old master artwork into a totally different old master's work. That technically can be done, but the reasons and techniques would often fall apart. So instead I half step the process and become creative with the variety of aesthetics I can create. That is why I avoid this debate on detail in my work, not the underlying work. It also allows me to be prolific.

I am precise though with the digital images for the creation of the composition. Squaring things, proportions etc.

Dave

Rembrandt represented his time period. In 2017 it would be a matter of what your patrons want.

Ed,

Rembrandt went out of style and was next to forgotten in the second half of his very long career. He was not considered the greatest of the Dutch Golden Age painters till some time after 1850.

In other words Rembrandt went well beyond his time period. So much so that he barely squeaked by financially for close to two decades. He had been the toast of the town in his early days.

Most of our patrons would prefer a Rembrandt still today.

Dave

In my own work precision veers towards illustration, the freer suggestion of at least some parts tends to be more successful as a painting. I admire Rembrandt enough to have copied portions of his paintings.
Sargent does something similar in his brief suggestion of dress fabric here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Agnew_of_Lochnaw

Thy say that a work of art is notable/defined by consistency. Presumably everything should be painted by the same size brush so that no element is greater than the others. In music it's consistent rhythm, in writing it's equal parts story and masterful metaphor, In practice rules are made to be broken and some parts should be different for emphasis/tension.

Peter, the way Rembrandt and John Singer Sargent both painted was genius. Auguste Renoir also used selective details to emphasize points of interest. I think it's a very economical way to paint. Economic in the sense of efficient.

For the older classic portraiture:

I'm pretty sure painters used mannequins for the clothing, they didn't usually expect the subject of a commissioned portrait to sit while the clothing is done.

That's part of the reason why you see so many portraits that have lots of detail in the clothing and other objects in the painting.

Also, there was a whole language of symbolism in clothing and the other objects in the painting.

Different objects represented social status, aspects of personality, or other abstract ideas. This language of symbolism was relatively universally understood at the time. The portraits were intended to tell a sort of story-in-symbolism. So the book, or the cat, or the bird in a cage, or the details in the clothing mattered to the symbolism / story, and therefore were important to the portrayal of the subject, the person in the portrait - the color of the sleeve, the lace cuff or collar, the pearl earring, the book partially open, the pen poised to write, the military uniform and medals, the cardinal's vestments, etc. These items would be painted in very clear detail, not in an expressionistic ambiguous way.

I'll need a few years before I can respond to this discussion. It's an interesting thread though.

I personally prefer suggestion, in fact that's what fascinates me the most about painting, how a few well placed brush strokes that up close look like nothing at a some distance come together to create a clear representation of something identifiable. To me, when it's all spelled out for the viewer it tends to become boring.

David K: There are a lot of people who prefer suggestion.

It's all about what the painter is trying to say, or what the person commissioning the work wants included in the painting. We participate in an art culture that accepts loose brushwork, impressionism, suggestion, and expressionism as valid. Historically, that wasn't always the case.

I was always taught that the brain paints better details than the brush ever will. It is not what you paint; it is about what you leave out.

Peter G, this reminds me of being a fan of Rembrandt from my younger years on. In 1961 I made a copy of a portrait I saw in a book. It was a small painting. The size in the book was identical to the original, which hang in a museum in Berlin. By copying a painting brushstroke for brushstroke you really get the feeling of how the master was doing it.

You can see my copy to the left in this image below.

Those with experience in portraits can testify that you must please the client...and most of us have a skewed sense of what we really look like. The last commission I accepted had me do about $100,000 worth of plastic surgery, but wasthrilled with the results...did it look like her? nah...
I'd guess that the details in clothing may have been an artistic ploy to draw attention to the more beautiful aspects of the subject, if you know what I mean.

As we all make our way through Life, we are all selective to maintain our sanity

We are all bombarded with a sensory onslaught ...All sorts of sounds, smells, tastes, textures and sights.

We must choose as to what to focus on and what to dismiss, otherwise it will all become overwhelming.

Therefore, precision on some things, suggestions on other things, and dismissal on most things


Now, here is where Art comes in:

Being precise where the norm is to ignore

I don't know.

Sometimes less is more, other times more is better. Sometimes you add too much, sometimes not enough, knowing when to stop is important. From personal experience, what has helped me the most is learning about human anatomy with regard to drawing - especially where the face is concerned, but also with regard to the body. I like doing a charcoal portrait where the face is fully detailed and the figure is suggestive, but I also enjoy doing highly detailed work for figure, face, and background. I understand and agree with the need to please your clients for commissions, but in the end, you are the artist, it's your work and your choice.
If you are interested, I think there are FAA groups that would give you honest critiques for specific pieces.
Thanks for starting this interesting discussion. Keep creating!
Cheers