Portraits Painting Peggi Habets

Portrait Paintings

Peggi Habets

While researching artists who paint portraits, I came across Peggi Habets. In her colourful and skilled use of watercolour and mixed media painting, she has managed to create portraits that not only captures the subject with visually accuracy, but also their personality and emotions.

Peggi Habets wasn't always a portrait painter. Before she moved back to her home town Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania she worked as a graphic designer and art director in Washington, DC. Once she returned home, Peggi Habets decided that she would return to her creative roots of drawing and painting. Peggi Habets took art classes and workshops to improve her skills. This introduced her to the fine arts community in Pittsburgh. After several years of study she found a niche in contemporary watercolour portraits.

After 15 years Peggi Habets has a thriving business as well as being invited to teach watercolour workshops around the country. Alongside her workshops and her private commissions, Peggi Habets has written several popular books and been published in many high profile art magazines. She has won numerous national and international awards.

Peggi Habets enjoys painting and says, "I love observing an individual or group and secretly creating a story based on a glance, gesture, interaction, or something else. Although my paintings are realistic in nature, my intent is not to create a painting that looks like a photograph. Instead, my primary goal is to tell a story, reveal an emotion, or set a mood. My greatest reward is to create a painting that connects with the viewer emotionally, rationally or inexplicably."

With Peggi Habets also offering commissions, this lets the public have a chance to own a personalised portrait of a loved one. Even her painting of pets cost upward of $1200. It's not cheap, but you have to take into account the skill ,time and effort involved. When preparing to work on commissions, all the photographs that are used as reference are taken by Peggi Habets herself, and once she has taken the photographs she then starts by drawing sketches of the subject before the final painting is started, much like the painters of old.

Peggi Habets manages to capture the personality of her subject. With her beautiful use of colours, it draws your eye into the painting. These colours also set the mood of the painting with dark, or washed out colours for a calmer or more solitary feeling. In contrast the bright vibrant colours have a lively feel to them. This gives the viewer a idea about the subject's emotion and personality.

Although the paintings are realistic, not all have the same detail. The background being more faded. This draws the eye to the main subject. In some paintings this allows the background and the person to bleed into each other. This bleeding effect allows colours from the background to become part of the person. This gives the feeling of the person's personality becoming part of their surroundings.

With each painting Peggi Habets seems to have captured a moment in time, a small piece of the person in question. Their emotion and personality seems to emanate from the canvas. Each painting has been thought out before any paint has even touched the paper. With sketches and photos taken before hand, this has allowed Peggi Habets to find out more about the subject, letting her find the right poses to best showcase the person. This process helps Peggi Habets choose the colour selection and the lighting that helps the viewer feel that they have seen a small piece of the person's personality

Peggi Habets. (). Bio. Available: http://www.peggihabets.com/mbr_bio.php#.VSP66Y7RBv8. Last accessed 1st Apr 2015.

Habets, P. (2007). Peggi Habets Studio Blog. Available: http://www.peggihabetsblog.com/. Last accessed 1st Apr 2015.