Van Roy has a love for art that dates back to his days in preschool. Now, he completes portraits through commissions and works at a shared studio space with other artists.
“Painting for me has more to do with a lack of impulse control,” Van Roy said. “I see beauty in a face or in a particular quality of light and I feel compelled to paint it. I see painting as a challenge. I’m always trying to bring to the canvas what I picture in my mind.”
Van Roy hasn’t always worked as an artist, though. He has been everything from a chef to a nurse’s assistant while art wasn’t paying the bills. It was during his time working at a hospital that he gained a unique understanding of portrait painting.
Read the entire Spokesman-Review article at http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/jun/27/capturing-expression-emotion/.
“In the hospital setting you meet people from all imaginable backgrounds, often as they are going through a very intense experience in their lives when they need a lot of support,” Van Roy said. “That’s what makes portrait painting unique from other types of art. People have such an amazing response to a portrait. You don’t often get tears and hugs from a person who purchases a painting of a landscape, but with a portrait that is nearly always the case.”
Enroll today in a class on portrait painting to hone your techniques. Instruction will center around how to accurately reproduce a face from everything from photographs to live models. Tutorials are available for portrait painters of all skill sets.