Speed Painting Photo Realism

I did this as an excercise for the purpose of, quite simply, practice. It's been a while since I attempted anything photo-real... It's very good to do this kind of thing because it strengthens your freehand drawing abilities, as well as developing an eye for detail.

Freehand drawn in photoshop cs2 (from a reference photo off to the side) with a wacom tablet.
time-lapsed... real time was about 3 and a half hours.

UPDATE:

For the people that think this is fake-- simply do a little research. It's as easy as clicking on my username to see the list of all of my other videos. There you will find an array of different subjects and different mediums... Including photo real techniques with real paint. It it's a pretty reasonable conclusion that if I can do the things I do with real paint-- why would I feel the need or insecurity to fake it with the "less impressive" digital mediums? Why waste my time?

You could also consider the efforts it would take to fake such a thing- consider the layering of the shadows and gradients... Look at how carefully it is done in these vids. There is a visible build-up of LAYERS of tones shadows and colors. To fake something like that would take so much effort, why would a guy who can do all of the other OBVIOUS traditional medium paintings on the same channel waste his time?


TO MANY PEOPLE ASK:
Why "photorealism"?
Why not just use a camera?

The answer is simple. I've made the point many times in my replies, comments and descriptions. But I'll make it clearer here for those who do not understand:

It's for practice. It is the same as a musician practicing scales, so that he can write better songs...Or even a musician who plays a song from another famous musician on a CD-- also to make himself better... To inspire/aspire to become better at the craft/skill.

It's the same with the art. Sure I am just acting like a human camera and re-creating every detail and color I see-- but that's where the conditioning is. Same as that musician that is replicating the sounds of a scale or someone else's song. (Why not just say to the musician, "why bother playing that song? Just put in the CD?" )

The fact that it is all freehand and controlled by my judgement makes it so valuable to attempt.... I have to be able to see and recognize exact tones of color, and be able to recreate it with extreme accuracy from scratch. I must be able to recognize every detail and the consistency that makes that detail REAL. It strengthens my abilities to be able to create works of art that come from my imagination.

Aside from practice, it is also a very commonly sought skill in the commercial trades to be able to mimic real-life with art. In addition to that, it does entertain the majority.

So there you go.

• Category

  Film & Animation

[WildCardFive]

the hair above the right ear is too blurry. Therefore, you fail utterly and completely and have no talent whatsoever.

I'm kidding, obviously. This is stunning.

[suzieake]

You shouldn't have to explain why you do photo realism... people should just see this, and appreciate it for it's beauty. No one questioned the old artistic masters for painting in realism, in fact, those who could manage it were highly regarded!

[shanochoi]

Amazing

[kozakhanda]

imagine if Da Vinci had photoshop

[jdwhfw]

I can draw stick figures

[Riku Kinnunen]

why you had to do earrings?? and right eye looks weird its maybe too bright compared to left eye.

[katieaurora768]

how about a SELF PORTRAIT :() ?? 

[ShinyCandySharpie]

I want to be like you when I grow up...

[Connor Olivardia]

It's painting using the medium of pixels

[MCANDSHT]

amazing

[rob b]

thats not painting..its computing..

[TGMinTCL]

Paint yourself? :o ever done that?