How a likeness gets made from words
People ask what a sitting is, since there is no photo.
It's one question, mostly: what's the one detail you can't leave out? Not the eye color. The thing you'd notice if it went missing from a room: the way she holds a cup with both hands, the half-second before he laughs, a coat that's too warm for the weather. Nobody comes to a sitting with facts. They come with one kept thing.
From that I take three decisions, in order: where the light comes from, what it falls on first, and what it does not reach. Everything else follows: the turn of a face, the set of a hand. That third one is the piece, usually. What the light doesn't reach is where the person actually lives.
You don't need to describe somebody well. You need to remember one thing about them well enough to miss it.
First look free: write to me about someone you carry, and I send back the one detail I'd keep and the line I'd hang the portrait on. No photo, no appointment. [email protected]