Well, I personally find "inspiration" a fleeting feeling. Maybe I can feel some superiority by adhering to Chuck Close's advice that "Inspiration is for amateurs," but either way, it's not easy. Frankly, finding the drive or creative spark to start a project is sort of like experiencing the same frustration you would have teaching a toddler a foreign language.
But why I personally find creating portraits to be good times? Like any other piece of art, the possibilities and solutions for determining the given space for a portrait work are limitless. But with portraits, there is the one particular goal of making a single facet of the piece relatively objective: the face.
The portrait artist must innately capture the facial features of a subject, there is only success or failure in this aspect. I have spent years and years (most of my life, actually) struggling with my perfectionism, and eventually yielding to its necessity in this field.
I think it's very important to realize and come to terms with the fact that even in these times of lightning-quick turnover and unbelievably short deadlines, great work (and artwork) cannot be rushed. For anything in this world to have longevity, there must be thought put into every aspect of its construction.
I believe that portraits, free from the limitations of photography technology, can truly capture a human essence that would be lost with time and age. It is almost a spiritual practice to give life to something through manual recreation; it cannot be duplicated with a machine. Perhaps the age of flat and soulless photographs ala Terry Richardson are what we are living through now, but that work does not adequately capture life as a person of depth knows it. So sticking to my guns with traditionally hand-created portraiture, satisfies my need for something authentic in a world saturated with assembly line iPads and drunken Facebook photos. Call me old-fashioned.
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