caricatures

CARICATURES The vast majority of people know absolutely nothing about portraiture or realistic portrait paintings (Realism) and the necessary techniques involved to produce one… People just assume that all of the portrait paintings that they’ve ever seen of so called European nobility were in fact real and authentic…

They don’t know about shadows, edges, and skin / flesh tones… A harsh dark shadow inhabiting the edge of the nose looks like a blotch; cheekbones appear as dark hollows making the person appear gaunt… The portrait may otherwise appear flat, with wishy-washy shadows that fails to inform on the facial contours… Applying ‘skin tone’ or ‘flesh tint’ over the prevailing areas of the portrait painting and then overlaying a dark color on top, to express shadows, creates the illusion of dark pools over the face… Perceiving shadows as having definite edges—expressing this view on the painting will make the portrait appear unnaturally harsh… Failing to observe how the edges of shadows blend into darkness—creates an unwanted patchy appearance to the face… A common problem I see with these idealized portraits—that reflect artistic license, is that they only use hard edges… This can give a painting a very unnatural / unrealistic appearance… Most certainly not indicative of a REAL “Old Master Painting”