Linda Newman

Linda Newman is currently a working artist in Los Angeles, California. She attended Florida State University, studying theater and with an art minor. While in school, she found a passion for working in fashion illustration. She has worked in New York and Hollywood, as well. She works in photography, painting murals and scenic sets, and illustration, among other things. For years, she was been working to “capture the essence” of the person she is drawing.

I found Linda Newman’s work on portraitartist.com. I saw her contact info on her website, so I emailed her. Within a few hours, she responded back. I find her advice really helpful. On her blog she has photos of her work in steps, which is helpful to see the process behind her work.

Here’s what she said:

HI Meghan:

Thank you for writing and I would be happy to discuss my portraits with you. I hope that you had a chance to visit my web site www.lindanewmanart.com where there are several examples of my work and a link to my blog. On my blog - which is currently "stuck" ( I have to work with my web guy to make it functional again), there are early blogs where I document the process of my painting with step by step photographs. You might find this helpful. My portraits come from my loving to draw and capture the essence of whoever I am drawing or painting and that has always ben inside of me. Since I was a child, I loved capturing the person on paper. I stopped for a long time and got back to my love of portraits after I decided I could make portraits that were not corny, flat and horribly uninteresting! I do not shy from working from photographs, because when people sit, they really have the most difficult time sitting still, so I photograph them. I love shooting photographs, and I believe getting that perfect moment on a particular photo helps me create an interesting painting. I literally shoot over 100 photo's of my subject, playing with light source etc. and I find that in that large group of photo's there are usually a handful of images that show the depth of the sitter in their "truth" , so to speak. This usually excites very much, and then I start to make the painting using large to small prints of the image I like. I do not use a grid, because I love the challenge of getting it right by my eye. This often requires adjustments all the way through the painting and I find the bits that are off that I cannot see by eye, show up beautifully when I take a pic of my painting with my phone camera and view it small. It seems to really do the trick- even more than flipping the painting upside down ( another trick of the trade).  I think that grid painting will ultimately make an image stiff and give that flat look that often plagues portraits....you may not have that problem, however ;) I would suggest hat you just keep drawing friends and people anywhere and make fast sketches too. You can train your eye that way with out the grid process and it's probably a bit more fun. There are also dimensions that are kind of basic with adult features and just start to really look and really see the length of a person' nose in relation to the width of their eye....etc.

I hope this is helpful! I would love to see some of your ketches or paintings. Please e-mail me some images if you would like to share them and also feel free to ask more questions in the future.

I am glad my work spoke to you. 

All the best!

Linda

http://lindanewmanart.com/

http://lindanewmanart.blogspot.com/