What is your color?
Almost everyone can answer that without thinking. Orange. Navy. Teal. Sage….
It is the color you keep coming back to, the one that turns up in the cushions and the mug and the coat you bought without meaning to. Nobody had to teach you what it was.That is what I build a portrait around.
What actually happens
Most portrait work starts and ends with the animal. Mine starts there too — the skull shape, the set of the ears, the exact way your dog holds one ear when he is listening. If that is wrong, nothing else matters, and no amount of beautiful color will save it.
But then it keeps going, into a question almost nobody asks: what color does this need to be, to work where you are going to hang it?
There are seven to choose from — moss, aqua, slate, charcoal, bronze, copper and ochre — drawn from the colors that actually turn up in houses rather than from a paint chart.
You pick the one that fits your room. Or you send me a few photos of your favorite colors and I will create a custom palette for you, which is what most people do and what I would do myself.
From there it is mine to solve: how dark the background goes, where the light falls, how much separation a white coat needs so it does not disappear into a pale background. That part is craft, and it is why every portrait is bespoke.
