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THE COOPERATIVE WORK PROCESS
(From an interview by Professor Nikita Pokrovsky with the artist Anton Kumankov)

III

V.P. Yenisherlov

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ut that isn't the only scenario where you might see in your portrait something you didn't quite expect. Often people have an exceptionally specific image of who they are and of how they look. Sometimes this image doesn't coincide with the artist's vision. You must be ready for this. But, in any case, a professional portraitist should imagine the reaction of the onlooker and, above all, your judgment of the final image, pointing up not only the outer resemblances (which goes without saying), but also the author's version of the interior world of his model. This, as they say, is the basis of our craft, in the wide sense of the term.

oes it look like me or not? This is everyone's first question. The model is always preoccupied by this. Rightly so! Putting aside for a moment the character of the person that is caught in the portrait, of his interior world, etc., there should still be an external resemblance. Without this there is no portrait. At the same time, achieving the outer resemblance is purely a technical task. They teach you how to accomplish it in art school. True, there are models who have amazingly mobile faces, with movements that are hard to pin down in their portraits. But, as a rule, the outer resemblance is easy to manage.

s it possible to draw a portrait from a photograph? Some artists don�t hide that this is just what they do. As for me, I never work this way. Only one time, many years ago, I received a letter from an elderly lady who was unknown to me, and whose son had died in the war in Afghanistan. With the letter she sent a small, crumpled photo of her son, probably taken from his passport or military I.D. � But after that I never again used a photographic image in my work.

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