AdnFubar says:

All of you are wrong!!! This is what Osama Bin Laden looks like now……

Ballenger says:

No question the artist has the skills mastered. Unless you zoom down and check the interior of the pores on the girl’s nose, it’s not easy to spot mistakes or irregularities. The scalp color around the part looks a little off, but no more so than a photo taken with a average or worse quality digital camera with less than decent lighting. The line that defines the models chin, may be as perfect as rendered by the artist. But, again if you do a deep zoom, and only then, it looks slightly like a mechanically generated semi-circle. In general if there is anything odd about the work, it’s that it is so flawless. From the grief experienced restoring my family photos, I think this guy should get whatever grade is better than an A+++. Oh, and he should have included boobs and also shoes in every example, that way, if there were problems both men and women would have been distracted enough to miss them.

Erik Blazynski says:

He gives her perfectly white teeth and then a black one in the back? seems odd. But if you were going to fake such a thing don’t you think that he would go through the trouble of fixing up the black tooth?

Me thinks that he air brushed a photo. I’d have to see this with my own two eyes to believe it.

gquaglia says:

#5 I agree, the same applies to me.

BubbaRay says:

#29, JCD, Hmm, must be the real John C. Dvorak, since my earlier post disappeared, Mr. Fusion’s post was edited, and renumbering has messed my post numbering to Mr. Fusion. I just wondered if it was really you posting. Now I know. Hey, it’s your blog, I was just concerned that someone was impersonating you. No offense was implied or intended.

jill says:

I think this is his real painting. He said the difference between this and his other work is he didn’t have an imposed deadline. His earlier attempt at portraiture was reasonably good but is clearly airbrushed. This one he spent 70 hours on and didn’t bother to paint the full body. He obviously had more time to focus on the subtler tonal variations and details of skin. I’d still like to see the painting and the photo side by side.

The painting’s not perfect, I see subtle flaws. I don’t want to nitpick, the guy’s got skills. The thing that stands out most to me is the earring and earlobe. The earring looks like it’s just kind of floating on top with some quick fake shadows added for effect. With so much subtle detail and refinement everywhere else it makes the painting look unfinished. Also the the placement of the earring looks unnaturally low. Regardless, the flaws are what allow him to qualify his work as valid according to his own definition.

I get that he’s sensitive about what is “valid.” Photography is the reason photorealism was and is largely dismissed as obsolete. Why spend 70 hours airbrushing when you can just take a photo? It’s really unfair for him to negate photography, even based on his own definition of art. Photography is valid (maybe not so much those portraits you can get at Sears or WalMart, or pics taken with point-and-shoot cameras) but in general, people learn the technical aspects to facilitate the creative. He says that photography “removes the filter of the human mind as an interpretative element” How can that be when a photographer chooses their composition, chooses their focal point, depth of field, exposure, contrast, lighting, etc. They’re still choices based on personal taste, subject matter, and the understanding of the visual and relational elements of art. It’s not all mechanical.

Firas says:

There is no way on earth that it’s a painting. It’s just a bit too real, and then there are the oddities already pointed out above especially the halter thing which John mentions.