While reading The Guardian (a UK newspaper) online, I came across the headline that Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, had had her first official portrait painted, I could hardly wait to see it. I mean she's a gorgeous, vivacious and charismatic young princess, (but not so young as to be a bland, blank slate)... what could go wrong?

So when I opened the story and saw a portrait Thomas Kincaide (the late, self-branded 'Painter of Light') might have been proud of, I was very, very disappointed.

Now I am usually someone who looks for and finds the positive in all kinds of artwork (ask any of my students, or people who attend my Gallery Walk & Talks), but faced with a portrait this bland, this made-for-greeting-cards, (in stark contrast to the 

the subject), it seems worthwhile to consider what went wrong. 

First, what went right?

If you visit the original story in The Guardian (just click on the painting), you will see that the painting is considerably larger than life, which seems suitable for the Duchess's personality. 

I have no doubt that the proportions and features were carefully measured and re-measured so as to be accurately rendered. 

Also, as in real life I'm sure, lots of attention was lavished on her hair.

OK, so what went wrong?

Too much focus on accurate rendering has led to a portrait that looks like Kate might look aged 50 having had some tasteful but effective cosmetic procedures done. 

The soft focus airbrush effect has got to die, it looks like a Breck shampoo ad from the 1970s, (remember them?) and terribly kitsch.

A person's beauty, personality and vitality come from within not from their surface appearance, the same surface applied to a different inner person would look different (as often happens with twins as they age for example). 

There are loads of gorgeous people who don't have classically beautiful features and proportions, who aren't young and perfect-looking but they make our heads swivel, they are magnetic.

The artist in this case needed to be freer in his application of the paint (make actual marks; give the paint the lively personality he needed to convey about the very lively Kate!); make artistic decisions, including altering the measured proportions of the face, to create a more accurate feeling for the person being portrayed. Accurate measurement ≠ truth. 

A key way artists take responsibility in their work is by making artistic decisions, whether that means editing, altering, adding, distorting and/or doing other things. Sometimes those decisions are going to work better than others, but they will still represent an attempt to communicate a point of view.

I feel badly for Emsley, the pressure of painting this beautiful and much-loved royal couldn't have been heavier, and while I'm sure he did his best I think he knows it's a disappointment because The Guardian reports he “said he had faced one difficulty with the portrait. Kate, he said, was just too beautiful to make a good subject.“

That does sound rather like making an excuse though doesn't it? I would have been happier if he'd said that her beauty was a challenge to adequately convey, because she is patently an excellent portrait subject, but the best subjects aren't only the easy ones.

What do you think of the new portrait? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Pinch me. Yes, that's me on the front page of The Brampton Guardian. The adjacent photo shows the article on page 11, based mostly on an interview with me.

Most people who know me know I do what I can to get the word out about shows, talks, workshops and other events. My philosophy is simple: if I don't invest time and energy in doing that, how will anyone know? Why would I do or offer any of those things if I don't want anyone to know about them?

A lot of artists shy away from promotion and publicity. I can understand why. 

The kind of person whose life ambition is to maximize the time they spend alone in their studio listening to their own train of thought may not gravitate naturally to putting themselves “out there”. As well, there is a set of skills and knowledge involved. 

In my first career as a designer/art director, I worked a lot in both promotion and direct mail. Those are not necessarily considered the premium areas to specialize in, and not because of budgets (some mailings numbered in the millions!). I believe one reason is that the results were so incredibly and immediately measurable. They were both very much a numbers game.

Every promotion and mailing had specific, tangible goals such as how many orders were placed? How many entered the contest? What kind of traffic numbers visited the booth? And so on.

Everything about the visuals, the writing, and the offers (price, free gift, contest, that kind of thing) was geared toward getting a measurable response while being consistent with the brand (which I always thought of as the "voice").

This is not the kind of thing that gets most artists excited, and while of course the work is the most important thing, if that work is meant to be seen in the world, never mind sold, we need to get first some skills in marketing and publicity, and secondly, just a little bit excited about coming up with a good turn of phrase, or an incentive or increasing our email list size.

Back to my photographs: This is my first front page for an exhibition. The only other time I made it onto a cover was when I wrote an article for The Root my alumni magazine (you can check it out by clicking here, the article is on page 17).

More than a little luck was involved in making it onto this front page: first the curator had to invite me to be in the show; then she had to give other spotlights to the other two artists so that I became the press focus; the show needed to be at a high profile venue like the Living Arts Centre; an editor had to decide that maybe the photograph would be a nice addition to the front page, or the content would improve the mix of stories.

Luck tends to find you more if you're putting yourself “out there” of course. So don't be a wallflower :-)