Portrait Painting Thibault

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I heard again recently painter Michael John Angel's lecture on the artist he knew, Pietro Annigoni here in Firenze, Italia. I like many of Annigoni’s works, mostly his portraits, but also his drawings after Firenze was bombed during World War II. I like the way he mixed media in his work in a very contemporary way. In fact, John Angel related that he once saw Annigoni paint with a brick!

But what I enjoy best about seeing his portraits is being reminded that a good design trumps a photographic likeness every time. On Monday, I started to paint a portrait of a young artist I know named Thibault (pronounced “T-bow). He is a good-looking French boy with dreadlocks and wears cool clothes.

Anyway, Mondays are typically my lesson exchange night: I teach anatomy to an Italian artist friend and he teaches me how to speak and understand Italian. On that night I was also making him dinner so that he could taste the new oil I had received from our weekend of olive picking in the Tuscan countryside. This is the Kelly length of telling you that I only had one-hour of a typically two-hour session with the model. So, I hope to improve upon this with more time. The third image is a close-up of the second image.