Since my last posting, I've been commissioned to produce about eight more paintings. I never set out to get this work, but just sort of fell into it. They are digital paintings on canvas that start out as a photograph. Each judge poses for about a 45-minute session in which I'll take about a hundred photographs. They then get to pick which image they'd like transformed into a painting. The image is transformed into a painting by painting brush strokes over the image with my Wacom Intuos Pro tablet and pen in Photoshop. After many iterations and days of work, the final image gets presented to the court for approval after which it gets printed on archival canvas, stretched and put in a gold frame. The finished paintings are then presented at an unveiling ceremony in the courtroom where the judges get to see the finished paintings for the first time.
The finished result gives the impression of an oil painting that was created by a Renaissance artist. This is not surprising, because it's recently been discovered that many of the great Renaissance painters used optical techniques to trace their subjects and get the lighting perfect, producing almost "photographic" oil paintings. Along with books on the subject, there is a very good documentary film called "Tim's Vermeer" which illustrates some of these techniques. I have developed my own techniques to get similar results.
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Judicial Portrait of a Carbon County Judge
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Judicial Portrait of a Carbon County Judge - detail
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Judicial Portrait of a Carbon County Judge - detail
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Judicial Portrait of a Carbon County Judge - detail
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Click on the images to see them larger.
This is one of three environmental judicial portraits that I painted for the Carbon County Courthouse in Pennsylvania. Shown is both the complete painting and some detail views. The canvas is 30x40".
You can see more examples of this work on my website for these projects: JudgesPortraits.com
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