Our Friend Peter

Peter is a good friend of our family and is the retired dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. April and I and two of our six sons are graduates or are students there now and that is how we came to know Peter. This portrait seems to capture Peter pretty well. He is a very thoughtful, loyal and warm person who is a devoted follower of Jesus and is quick to see the humor in this sometimes crazy life. This pose is classic Peter. In preparation for this portrait I snapped over 50 digital shots while April engaged him in conversation about family and friends. Most of my paintings are of people but, I don't do a lot of portraits. I don't have a problem doing them other than I am very hard on myself when I do them. I may invest too much time in doing them. The preparation for this work included several pencil sketches and two watercolor sketches in order to finally arrive at this piece. I prefer to freehand sketch the portrait rather than mechanically project the image on to the canvas and then trace it as some professional portrait artists prefer. I am by no means a purist in this. If I did more portraits I might find projecting more efficient but I am pursuing more than an accurate likeness when I do a portrait. My hope is to capture the person in a deeper way. Doing the sketches and the other prep work that I do helps me to discover what it is about a person that makes the subject obviously them to the viewers that know them best. I would enjoy comments from those of you who know our friend Peter.