My daughter sat for me and didn't complain once. It meant more than the painting.
I got my fifteen-year-old to sit for a portrait this weekend. She usually lasts about twenty minutes before the phone comes out and the whole thing falls apart, but she stayed for two hours. Two hours of her just sitting in the grey afternoon light by the window, no music, no complaining, letting me look at her properly.
I finished the head in one sitting, which almost never happens. And I caught something in the jaw and the way her shoulder drops that I've been trying to get for years. Not a perfect likeness. Better. The real one.
She came over afterwards and looked at it and said "c'est moi" in that flat teenage voice, which from her is practically a standing ovation.
I don't know why it got me. Maybe because she's at the age where she's leaving, you know, and I sat there with paint on my hands and got to keep her for one afternoon. The painting is fine. That's not what I'm celebrating.
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That "better than likeness" bit, I know exactly what you mean. I spend my life placing small pieces of stone and every so often one of them stops being accurate and starts being true. It never happens when you chase it. It happens when you're not thinking about the work at all, just looking.
Also, a teenager sitting still for two hours without her phone? That girl loves you in a way she can't say out loud yet. She gave you a gift and didn't even know it.
That jaw and shoulder drop, you've been looking for that for years, and she sat there long enough to let you find it. Sounds like you both got something that weekend. 🙂
"Stops being accurate and starts being true" is exactly it. I've never had the words for it but that's the whole thing. When you're chasing it it runs away, and the moment you just look, there it is.
You work in stone, that's a patient person's medium. I have enormous respect for that. Wood and canvas forgive you. Stone doesn't.
As for her, I know. She doesn't know I know, but I know. She also cleaned her brushes without being asked, which for a fifteen-year-old is practically a declaration of love.