How to cheat at portraits.

[fraser_paice]

As promised, how to make a stencil look like a painting you have spent hours on.

First pick the right photo, nice and contrasty, black and white is best.

Use a dark background, load the stencil from disk and then invert it so it looks like a negative.

[fraser_paice]

I've used some rulers to frame the stencil. Going to use the airbrush with white here but you can get interesting effects with other colours.

[fraser_paice]

Ok now using the knife on soft smear the paint about to lose the photo quality and simulate brush strokes. Also I've used the eraser to sharpen things up.

[fraser_paice]

Finally I use another two layers one for highlights and the other for shadows. Pencil smeared with the soft knife set to size one.

[fraser_paice]

And there you are a cheated portrait, this one is a bit messy as I didn't spend too much time on it because I wanted the tutorial to be finished. Have fun kids.

[dali]

Man, now we aren't going to know the real from the cheats! Perfect portrait, I didn't know you could do that.

[Someonesane]

One could also just import the image itself and smear it using the palette knife. Though I'd recommend it only be done if one wants to learn how to make strokes that accentuate form, because while one may find a way to cheat things digitally, it won't do much good when one needs to create a painting using true oil paints on a physical canvas.

But as I said, for learning purposes it can help. Below is a "cheated" painting I did just for this thread and only took about 20 minutes, by importing the image I downloaded to the canvas and then smearing the colors with the flat palette knife.

[weembaman]

Well I'll be Damned..haaaaaaaa..I guess there is always a way to get things done...There is nothing wrong with that if you just want to show off but if you want to become a better artist it won't help...

[byroncallas]

...can run any photo through any one of dozens of painting filters in numerous programs (PhotoShop, Paintshop, etc. etc.) and have it all done in 3 seconds? Cheating at the speed of light.

[dali]

I guess people will just have to start posting more progressions. Of course that can be cheated on as well. I will try to "cheat" at a pic with progressions tonight and post it.