Two Portraits of Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders is the subject of two of my latest oil painting portraits. The independent senator from Vermont has a massive fan base throughout the Americas. My relatives in Chile have never heard of Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer, but know Bernie as el senador socialista — a term of endearment in the global south that doesn’t have the same negative connotation as it does in U.S. politics.
Anyway, I’ve painted four Bernie portraits over the last year or so — two during the August recess which began three weeks ago. I decided to challenge myself with both of my recess portraits of Bernie by incorporating news things. For Bernie No. 3, I tried out a new color on my palette: Transparent Orange which, as you can see, is the incredibly loud, powerful pigment in the background of Bernie No. 3 —
Transparent Orange is notable for its warm yellow undertone, which You can see in the bottom right of Bernie No. 3. Winsor & Newton, a London-based oil manufacturer, created the pigment I used on the painting. This was a break from my usual orthodoxy of using all-American painting supplies, but the Gamblin version was out of stock at the Blick Art store downtown.
Bernie No. 3 was my first portrait of the August recess this year. Overall, I’m satisfied with the way it turned out. I was inspired to use the orange background by "Protagonist of an Endless Story”, a 1993 portrait by the late Angel Rodriguez Diaz that’s currently on display in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) —
Rodriguez-Diaz is one several excellent Latino portraits the NPG has had on temporary display in the last year-or-so. Someday mine, too, will be on display in a Smithsonian, perhaps the NPG. Of that, I have no doubt. But it’ll be a while. The gulf between my talent and the nation’s best portraitist remains wide, despite that it’s narrowing fast.
My goal as a portraitist is to enter the Smithsonian’s Outwin Boochever national portrait competition in 2025 and be a finalist by the end of the decade. The Outwin is like the art MVP of American portraitists. It’s a huge deal to be included, let alone be selected as a finalist by the panel of seven judges (4 artists, 3 Smithsonian curators).
To that end, where Transparent Orange was the new thing I tried on Bernie No. 3, the hands were the focus of Bernie No. 4 —
Hands are one of the hardest elements for a portraitist to tackle when making a person come alive on canvas. As a public figure, Bernie is known for speaking with his hands and shoulders. Whether a stump speech as a candidate or floor debate in the Senate, Bernie uses his hands to illustrate his points.
Side note: As artificial intelligence takes over a lot of creative tasks, AI image have failed so far to replicate human hands in a way that look real, or natural. The problem, according to programmers, is that while an AI can identify what a hand is, replicating functionally what a hand does is a very different story. The result is that AI generated images of hands tend to produce mangled fingers pointed in unnatural directions. With that in mind, I’ve been focusing more and more on learning how to make hands in my art.
Bernie No. 4 has been one of my most-popular portraits so far. The image has gotten a ton of engagement online from the senator’s supporters. This has been highly satisfying, since it took me forrrrever to make his hands here. Each hand took about two or three times as long as his face to finish. A friend who saw the portrait told me that the portraitists who paint committee chairs in the House of Representatives charge double or more for images that include hands. Good to know, perhaps for future reference ;)
Welp, that’s it for now. If you read this far, consider sharing this post with anyone who might find it interesting. I’ve picked up some artist followers on this newsletter which is very exciting. To this end, I created an “Art” vertical for posts like this one. You can find it on the top bar of pabloreports.com, beside “Reporting”. Happy Tuesday!