There is no reliable way to explain why one face stays and a thousand others do not. I have stopped trying to make it logical.
People think a portrait begins with the eyes. For me it begins with an angle — the way somebody holds their head when they think no one is looking, or the half-second before they laugh.
I keep a notebook of these. Most never become paintings. The ones that do tend to look nothing like the photograph and exactly like the memory.
