Why Your Portrait in Oil is better than Any Other Image

Alya Khemji
3 min readJul 29, 2019

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Creating a portrait is an amazing way that an artist can highlight the image of a person, animal or even a group of people. Long before the photographs came, artists would ask the subject to be painted to sit on a chair in front of them so they could then paint them. Things then changed with the arrival of advanced cameras and photography procedures have changed the way portrait art is created. The modern artists creating contemporary art pieces can now draw portraits of their subject from a photograph. This means that you may not really need to sit in front of an award winning portrait artist to draw a portrait of you.

Portraits are supposed to talk to the viewers about what they are all about. In fact, a good portrait goes far beyond just a visual representation of the person that’s painted; it also highlights something about the essence of the painted person. A portrait done with oil for instance has the impact of captivating viewers, drawing them into it and engages their attention.

Portrait done in oil can be intriguing to the viewer and the viewer may even wonder the person depicted on it. This facet can make an oil portrait to function as a biography, one that’s telling a story about a person’s life. Through oil paintings an artist can carefully create visual clues telling the story of the person depicted in the artwork. Oil paintings can also reveal the sitter’s place in the society things such as; what the sitter’s hobbies are, the sitter’s beliefs, as well as personality.

Portraits done through oil painting can say a lot about the portrait that is depicted in the artwork. Oil paint allows the artist to choose any style he/she deems fit to create the artwork this creates a different effect on the overall tone of the piece of artwork.

Oil painting offers the artist a multitude of styles and this allows the artist to be able to manipulate the portrait to either be realistic or expressionist. Basically the style that an artist chooses is what will alter the effect that the portrait will have on the person viewing it.

Another benefit of portrait in oil is that strange color themes can be used infinitely. An award winning portrait artist such as Suzi Nassif can easily use unconventional color schemes to convey emotion. In fact, these are the characteristics of contemporary art that are now taking shape in different part of the world.

Creating a portrait with oil can highlight detailed and delicate features that other art mediums may not actual highlight. Using a brushstroke, an artist can effectively convey emotion in the given portrait more easily than when working with other mediums.

Another reason a portrait in oil may be better than any other image is that portraits done in oil may only just show the face of the sitter. If the artist doing the work likes, other objects and features can be used to highlight visual clues about the person being depicted.

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Alya Khemji
Alya Khemji

Written by Alya Khemji

Digital Marketing Expert Dubai

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