Commissioning a house portrait

A house portrait is bought with a photograph, but it is made with instructions. The photograph gives the artist the facts: the roof line, the window bays, the porch that leans two inches left. The instructions give her the house: which tree matters, which season to draw, which of the century's clutter to leave off the sheet. A good commission supplies both, and the first is easier than most clients think.

The photograph that works

The artist does not need a professional shot. She needs one honest angle and enough supporting views to read the parts the camera hides. The working image is almost always a three-quarter view from the front: it shows the face of the house and one wall turning away, which is what lets the drawing sit in space instead of lying flat like a plan. A straight-on front reads as an elevation; a corner reads as a home.

Two or three extra snapshots earn their postage. One from the opposite side catches the chimney and the window arrangement on the hidden wall. One close shot of the entry settles the door, the knocker, the porch brackets, all the small hardware a wide shot flattens into noise. If the house has a detail the family loves, a fanlight, a brick arch, a date stone, photograph it separately and say so.

The season and the light

A photograph taken at noon in July is a different house from the same front at four in the afternoon in October. Long shadows tell the pen where to put the shade; flat light leaves the drawing flat too. If the only photograph is flat, say which side the evening sun comes from and the artist can rebuild the shade herself.

Season is a choice, not a fact. A portrait can be drawn in spring leaf even if the snapshot was taken in February; the tree is drawn full, the beds are drawn planted, and nobody is obliged to draw the snow. The sheet keeps the house at its best remembered moment, which is usually the reason it was commissioned in the first place.

The first instructions

Before the pencil touches paper, the useful commission answers four questions. What stays: the porch swing, the lilac, the cat on the step. What goes: cars, wires, bins, the neighbor's fence, the for-sale sign. What size the sheet should be, small or standard. And whether the portrait finishes in ink alone or takes a wash of color. Everything else, the paper, the mat, the mailing, follows from those four answers, and the rest of this board walks through each one in turn.

The questions worth asking

A first-time client rarely knows what a good studio will ask, so the surprises arrive late. Expect questions about the street: which side the house sits on, whether the artist may work from a street view when the snapshots are weak. Expect questions about the people: whether anyone should be drawn on the porch, and the honest answer is usually no, because a figure dates a portrait faster than a car does. Expect a question about copies: how many prints, and whether the drawing may appear in the studio's own portfolio, a point worth settling before the inking rather than after. The client who arrives with these answers already decided moves through a commission in half the correspondence.

The sheet, filed

Commissioning is not buying a picture of a house; it is handing an artist the house as the family knows it and asking her to keep only that. The photograph supplies the evidence, the instructions supply the meaning, and the sheet that comes back holds both. The next sheet on the board takes up the second half of the job: the list of things the pen is asked to remove.