Planning Your Oil
Portrait Commission
The first step is the most important. Planning isn't simply a matter of deciding what goes into the portrait. It's about discovering the strongest way to express what the portrait is intended to say.
What do you want your portrait to say?
My goal is to understand and ultimately enrich what you envision.
You may already have very specific ideas, or you may have only the vaguest sense of what you want. Either way, those ideas are the starting point. Marvin brings an unusually broad visual vocabulary to the process. Decades spent creating imagery across many different genres taught him to look beyond the obvious solution and consider possibilities that might otherwise never be explored.
Sometimes an idea is already strong and simply needs to be developed. Other times, the suggestion of a small detail or a simple question can open up possibilities you hadn't considered. Marvin's role is to understand what you're trying to accomplish and use his experience to explore, refine and expand upon that vision.
A portrait should do more than capture an appearance. It should say something meaningful.
The various paths of Marvin’s career didn’t merely give him more technical tools. They eventually led him toward the subject that gave those tools purpose: portraiture. His underlying reason for making art isn’t novelty or intellectual cleverness. Portraiture is the ultimate celebration of life.
The goal of the planning process is to arrive at a clear understanding of what the portrait is going to be. Once the essential elements have been established, the path forward is mapped out. The decisions that follow aren't random or improvised. They're purposeful.
