29.9.10

Portraiture in 3D - the new craze ?


I'm tempted to teach portraiture with a difference. Maybe some 3D effects would be quite cool. I've been experimenting with a couple of ideas - see what you think. Here's the story.......when I teach portraiture I need to have something to work on to use as the demo. One of the demo portraits currently on my easel is of my daughter, Stef. She was quite surprised to come home from work to see the underpainting stage, and I think she's quite chuffed with it so far too. She's already cleared a space on her bedroom wall, so that's a good sign. Now I've told her it will be a basic portrait and I don't intend to paint in her fiddly jangly dangly earrings. She's insisting I do. Jokingly, last night I took the portrait upstairs to her bedroom, found the earrings in question and tried to sell her my new 3D effect. I could simply pierce her ear on the canvas and loop the earring through - voila. In the spirit of artistic licence, I also took one of her longest, fullest, blackest false eyelashes and stuck it to the top of her eye - enhancing the dimensions and giving the portrait a very lifelike, touchy-feely concept. I guess you had to be there - but it was a right giggle. Of course, I'm joking, I'll paint in the eyelashes and a lot of other details too - still not sure about those earrings though.......what do ya reckon?