Todays piece was started in January, but finished in February (in fact the final piece was painted entirely in February) and like everything else from the first chunk of this month I'm really not happy with it, but I concede that it's way better than it had any right to be, as you may see upon reading the tale behind it. Before that though, let's take a look at the final work...
Yep, it's a caricatured beauty queen. Actually I'm not sure she's wearing the sash due to her beauty (though she's not unattractive), but she is a queen in a similar sense - oh, it really doesn't matter, let's start at the beginning. From this point on the names have been changed to protect the innocent.*
So I used to work with a woman who we'll call A, who left the company about a year ago. We still stay in touch and I guess we're good friends as far as two folks who live a way apart can be. She contacted me in January and asked if I remember doing a given portrait that she'd been impressed with; the significance of which portrait she mentioned was lost on me at the time because I was busy - you'll find out which it was in a bit. So I said yes, and she asked if I could do a portrait for her.
Now if I was going to charge for such a thing I would have mentioned this right off the bat, but since I'm pretty sure I owe A a favor I didn't bring it up at all; this would be a freebie and she could owe me a favor again in return. So I say "Sure, who do you want me to paint?" and she sends me a photo.
It's the worst possible photo to work from. OK, that's a lie, it could have been worse - it could have been of the back of someones head; but this was only slightly better. I'm not going to show you the source images as the subject (who we'll now call Z) hasn't given permission for me to use them, but trust me; it was ghastly. It looked like a photograph of another photograph that was itself not taken under the best of conditions, and it was really small.
You could tell the subject was pretty, but that was about all it had going for it - her eyes were tiny, the perspective was weird, the image was noisy and very blurred and the whole picture was 320 pixels high. This was not a good picture to paint from. A speedpaint I could probably do, but a nice portrait? Ugh. She got me another picture later which was much clearer but a similar size and full body - so her face was even smaller. This wasn't actually for A, but for her brother, so I assume she was relying on him for the images, but anyway, it was not ideal.
This is a sketch I managed to cobble together from the two photographs. I sent it to A and she pointed out some discrepancies and I looked at the photos and the sketch and realized this wasn't going to work at all. Then I looked at the photos again, and realised I could go all Sherlock on it. The second photo had text visible on the sash, and with some squinting I could sort of make out sort of what it said. Google time!
I found about a dozen images of Z, and they were all deficient in some way. All of them were better than the original photo, but all of them were also very small. Z doesn't share her facebook photos publicly, and I didn't want to try friending her in case the portrait was supposed to be a surprise for her, and without that reason why would she friend me? "Hi, you don't know me, but I'm the nearly forty year old friend of A and... Oh, I hear sirens!" (I actually have no idea how old she is, but I'm guessing between 17 and 19)
Basically I felt like a creepy stalker that night, but while I didn't get any pictures that were much use on their own, together I thought I might be able to cobble something out of them. So another sketch ensued.
A cleared it and I started painting. This did not go well, though I liked the background. I think there's 3 or 4 hours work in the one below, which I've included fairly large, but I was not happy with the progress at all. It felt stiled and oddly fake, like a painting of a mannequin or something. Then I got sick (turns out I was sicker than I thought, I just went to bed early, but after a visit to the doctor after a couple of days it turned out I was lucky not to be in a hospital. Great!), and sent A my progress.
"Oh," she says, "I was expecting more of a caricature."
Damn and blast! Y'see, when she initially asked me if I remembered a particular portrait it was my one of the 9th Doctor, and then I'd simply spaced on the significance of that being a caricature.
Oh Well then, back, as the title says, to the drawing board. Rather than start completely from scratch I took the original sketch and drew over it and warped it a little in Photoshop. You may think the cheeks I've drawn are a little OTT, but they're there with the certain knowledge I'm going to paint over them; they're purely guidelines for form rather than light.
Then I started painting over the background I already had.
Around here I sent it to A. "Wow James thats looking awesome!!!!!" was the response. I think four exclamation marks may have been overkill, but I did appreciate the sentiment.
After that I just needed to finish it up. Painting the crown was the hardest part, and I hate the result - If I'd had a lot of time I would have done it again, but I was supposed to get the finished piece to her by February 10th, and as it was she didn't get it until the day after (that whole sick thing slowed me down a lot). You'll note I changed the background? Well, with the new direction I didn't feel the icy scene was going to work, and changing it allowed me to go in there with some stage lighting style edge lights.
And after this step I took it into Photoshop for a smidgen of cleanup and some glares on her jewelry and such (this is something I usually don't do) and the result is of course at the top of the page.
I don't know if A still thinks it's awesome as she thanked me but took it no further. I also don't know what the actual client thought because he hadn't responded to A last time I spoke to her. I also don't know what Z thought of the whole thing - to the best of my knowledge she's yet to see it. For me though, I'm not happy with aspects of the picture, but given the tiny, grainy, blurred and distorted image I was initially given to work from I think I did okay. I actually have no idea if it really looks anything like the subject though, I hope it does, and that she likes it enough to forgive my evening of being a creepy stalker.
*They've actually been changed because based on Z's level of privacy online I'm guessing she doesn't want her name thrown around much, and I'm fine with respecting that. Besides, now she sounds like one of the Men In Black... Hey Z, you ever want a picture of yourself as an MIB, you go ahead and send me a good quality photo mmm'kay?
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