Why so Glum?

So, someone asked me recently why my paintings always looked so sad... rather glum?  It's a hard question to wrap my head around just like all questions when it comes to my paintings, but I figured I take a stab at.  

When I finally get the chance to bang out a painting... I rarely think about what it is going to be in advance.  Unless it is  a commission of a specific subject.  So, this sad look just comes naturally to me.  Occasionally when I do put a smile on a face, more likely a smirk,  I find it really unsettling and forced and usually I paint over it.  I have trouble looking at a smiling face that is not real.  I reserve my smiles for moments that are truly funny and usually fleeting... to capture a truly funny moment in my head and then try and relay it into a portrait, well to me the moment would be gone.

I naturally find myself thinking with a straight face, frown, maybe a smirk, but rarely do I find myself thinking and actually let myself smile.  Most of my little people are in some kind of thought.

It got me thinking even more about whether I see smiling faces in paintings that often?  Not really.  When I do see a smiling face in a painting, I'm not gonna lie, I rarely like it.  When I open up a magazine, yes there is that inviting smile on the front page, but the images I love the most are the editorial fashion spreads with those serious forlorn images.

I think I might have one exception though.  I love to see images at parties with canoodling and such with people with their heads thrown back in laughter... almost pushing each other in delight.  So, maybe someday soon I'll have the time to paint some such party images. I'll consider it a challenge.

I guess we will have to wait until then to turn that frown upside down!

(p.s. a new coiffured figure up there to add to the collection... a little bit of a smirk!)