The person as they be seen

I have wanted to do portraiture in the holidays, but for the lack of models (being too timid to ask anyone) and the accompanying lack of training and experience in drawing people (which doesn't much help the former). So what came out recently instead is stuff somewhat akin to storybook illustrations. Portraits of people around me figure high in my mental todo list, notwithstanding.

What would be the best way to capture an image of a person? Here I assume that there are at least two, in very broad terms. One, an enshrinement of image with a contrived, orderly posture; Two, natural portrayal, or as the person is seen and met in daily life. Personally I would choose natural portrayal as a medium, seeing that people have been drawing posed figures close ever since they were done with Lascaux. Besides, natural portrayal of a person looks and feels like the real folk; it is recognisable. Might be something Tolstoy would like.

On the other hand, if you visualise a portrait being hung up on a wall, say in someone's room, fulfilling the function as a medium of the inhabitant's image, then the viability of natural portrayal in its purest form would eventually come to be questioned. Let's imagine that the model for Lucian Freud's Naked Man on a Bed buys the painting on account of its candid and relaxed pose being true to the model's character. Would he not think twice about placing it in his living room? Visitors may be inclined to scream, "Aargh, naked man on a bed!" before paying heed to any portrayal of image unique on the part of the host. Used as a portrait, the painting may show a true face, but even that would be lost to the audience if spontaniety is not given an upper bound.

There's a more apparent problem to natural portrayal: its role when the person depicted has deceased. A portrait here would ideally provoke certain memories in the minds of family and friends as they look upon the portrait. A spontaneously-captured portrait may reveal much of the subject's character, but that is only one possibility. Maybe the subject is portrayed in his or her bad mood; the gaze is turned away from the audience, and their loved ones leave grieved by the way that the barrier between them and the dead has not yielded to the painter's efforts. Maybe the subject is rendered in a ridiculous pose, which may prove to be distracting by the preoccupied audience.

As suggested there will be a standard to which naturalistic portraiture, if the purpose is to preserve the subject's image for posterity, has to conform. That is, a portrait is judged based on how well it portrays the subject's totality of character, experience, value systems etc. Maybe it is good now to launch into how specifically one should go about the business, but, alas, I am not yet so qualified. Louis Briel has much more to say about portraiture, and my view on it has much to do with his.

You can reach his article here, which wass given out to us in Art class as a reading. I hope it still is.
Portraits as Intuitive History
Louis Briel (website)