smidgy.com — Artist Dru Blair presented a photo portrait to his class and instructed them to reproduce the photo in painting as best they could. After the class had ended, he decided to test the limits of his painting skills and took it upon himself to recreate the photo, with pretty startling results.
May 21, 2007 View in Crawl 4
andysimmons1351May 23, 2007
peccavimus,You are overlooking a few FACTSFact: The painting had to be photographed and converted to digital at some point, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing it here on line. The digital scan has to be resized for the web, hence the Photoshop CS3 tag.Fact: From his website, there are photographs of his students with THE ORIGINAL painting. If this is a hoax, then why have his students, who clearly have access to the original, never blown the whistle?Fact: He created the painting during a class with 20 students, with new students attending every month since. In other words, there were and still are witnesses to the original painting. How can that be faked?Fact: Airbrush Action Magazine ran an article with a 40 page step by step of the painting. www.Airbrushaction.comFact: His students are discussing the original on the airbrush forums.Fact: Your skepicism pays him an enormous compliment.Fact: His student at <a class="user" href="http://www.marissa-art.com">http://www.marissa-art.com</a> demonstrates a similar degree of realismAndy
anonymouslyMay 23, 2007
"Fact: He created the painting during a class with 20 students, with new students attending every month since. In other words, there were and still are witnesses to the original painting. How can that be faked?"Wrong. He didn't create the painting in front of his students. From his website:"After the class concluded, I remained in the studio contemplating Tica's image. After some deliberation, I decided to test the limits of my visual skills by completing the project painting."He states that the image that the students saw was after a few hours. The next 60+ hours where it went from an airbrush painting to what we see now, he did alone."Fact: From his website, there are photographs of his students with THE ORIGINAL painting. If this is a hoax, then why have his students, who clearly have access to the original, never blown the whistle? ..."Because there is likely _a_ painting, just not the painting we are seeing in the close-ups. The guy has talent, but as I argue above, not as much talent as the images would evidence. Moreover, it's not particularly difficult to fake it if you have some skill in the first place: airbrush over a photograph. There are plenty of "fake" paintings out there that even appear to have brush strokes. It's even easier if it's an airbrush painting where there wouldn't be any "strokes" to speak of. Anything that made you think it was a photograph, he would simply argue was his superior skill. Student: I'm an 1" away and it still looks like a photograph!Teacher: Well, when you're as good as I am, it'll look like that."Fact: Airbrush Action Magazine ran an article with a 40 page step by step of the painting. www.Airbrushaction.com"You have a link to the article? Again, I think most people agree that there is in fact a painting of this woman. But there is no close-up of the the incredibly detailed versions that demonstrate they show a painting, such as a close-up with a person standing next to it. Rather, we have zoomed out shots and Airbrush Action, and incomplete paintings that don't look like the final."Fact: His student at <a class="user" href="http://www.marissa-art.com">http://www.marissa-art.com</a> demonstrates a similar degree of realism"Not even close. That level of realism is similar to his _other_ paintings. All of a sudden, he made an exponential leap in skill from his other paintings with no explanation.FACT: The large picture on his website is not the painting it is a photograph. As he says, "Nearing completion of the painting, I decided to remove a some elements such as the nap of cloth next to her armpit."That piece of "nap" can clearly be seen in the main shot here: <a class="user" href="http://www.drublair.com/workshops/images/ticastepweb.jpg">http://www.drublair.com/workshops/images/ticastepweb.jpg</a>See the nap? He admitted he removed it from the painting. THAT IS A PHOTOGRAPH.
andysimmons1351May 25, 2007
peccavimus wrote: "He didn't say he painted it and then decided to remove the nap later. "Sure he did. He said it on the airbrush forum if you would take the time to read. He said that he painted the nap and decided to remove it at the very end *after* he posted the image in the montage.Regarding the IPTC comment, not all artists have their work digitized by a professional scanner, especially if they do not plan to print it. I'm not sure why you have difficulty understanding that he probably took a photo of the original with a digital camera, cropped and resized it in photoshop, then posted it on his website. It would seem logical that he took his step by step images this way too rather than have each on professionally scanned. At 20" by 30" I doubt that the original would fit on most desktop scanners.Here's close up in progress shot from his step by step article: <a class="user" href="http://airbrush.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=227344&mpage=1&key=tica&#227474">http://airbrush.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=227344&mpage=1&key=tica&#227474</a> It looks like it lies somewhere between the 10 hour image and the final, and seems consistent with the link you provided: <a class="user" href="http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ticacomparisondd1.gif">http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ticacomparisondd1.gif</a>It seems that you are having difficulty coming to grips that this image could possibly have been painted at the scale, and are attempting to justify your skepticism by claiming that he couldn't have possibly altered the nap, or that he couldn't have photographed the original with a digital camera. Amazing.:-)
andysimmons1351May 27, 2007
My dearest peccavimus:I see that you have a "creative" method of mis-interpreting Dru Blair's words. However, here is what Dru Blair himself posted about the nap issue. By the way, this completely negates your argument. Sorry, but thanks for playing."Nearing completion of the painting, I decided to remove some of the elements I had already painted such as the nap of cloth next to her armpit."Only a fool would interpret this to mean anything other than he did indeed add the nap, then removed it just before completing the painting.Any questions?PS: Sure, he probably owns a scanner, but again you forget that the painting measures 20" x 30." How is he going to fit that on a conventional scanner without scanning it in sections then stitching it back together? Far easier to just take a digital shot with his 8 megapixel Nikon. And yes, the Nikon has more than enough resolution for these 72 ppi web displays.
cire73Jun 20, 2007
well i have been to his house and i have seen it in real life had it in my hands and it is real i did not think it was real ether so my brother and i went there to see it and took his class worth every penny !!!!!! his a living master
windgreen189Oct 24, 2010
good.tks