Why do portrait commissions cost a lot?
My portraits shouldn’t be confused with 10-minute caricatures at the mall. They also aren’t “sketches.” Many people call all pencil drawings “sketches,” but a sketch is really just the first step in creating a work of art. Artists use sketches to plan their work, just like writers make an outline. Just for comparison, here are some of my real sketches, called gesture drawings because they try to capture motion, rather than detail. You can see, they are nothing like my finished drawings for sale here. My graphite pencil drawings start with a 30-minute sketch, but that is only the beginning. I spend another eight to ten hours carefully applying stroke after stroke of graphite to build up a whole range of shades from black to white. Fully rendering textures and details can’t be rushed, whether they are created in paint, pencil, or pastel.
