Be Excellent To Each Other

Superb mate.

There's real life in your paintings. So many portraits are flat and empty looking, but yours are always 'sparkly' for want of a better word. I suppose it comes with being a photographer and understanding portraits.

That's awesome. I spent so long looking at all the detail you've painted in his face that I've only just noticed the shallow depth of field. It's possibly the first time I've noticed someone use that in a painting. I assume it's because of the photo it's based on, but I like it, it suits your style.

I tend to prefer shallow depth of field for standalone portraits like this as it does focus the attention on the sitter, obviously. In this particular shot, it was taken with available light from a bedroom window and I was shooting on a Rolleiflex TLR, so I was almost certainly shooting at F2.8 which is wide open on medium format, so the depth of field at that focal length would be measured in centimetres not inches as the shot was only cropped on teh edges not the top and bottom - the Rollei TLR shoots 6cm x 6cm negs, so depth of field is much narrower than 35mm anyway.

In response to DavPaz, it's all in the eyes and it's something that's tricky to capture well, even in photography. In this instance it was my grandfather so I knew him well enough to get the required response to bring him alive in the shot so it was simply a matter of re-capturing/interpretating that for this particular painting. In other work, I've used several pictures to work from, taking the expression in the eyes from one shot, the shape of the mouth from another and the actual pose from another - the idea being to try and capture that essence of the person which is very difficult to do with one shot, so I frequently take hundreds of pictures, all very similar and narrow it down from there. You do sometimes strike it lucky and get the perfect picture, but then you still need to inject some soul into a painting and that's something that hopefully just manifests itself without too much finessing. It can be a slippery thing to capture though.

Stunning work, nicely done good sir

Another painting.

Nature v Nurture

Could you let me know what this looks like on your screens — having the usual nightmare getting this to actually look like the painting and the perennial bloody struggle with colour spaces I seem to have.
The painting itself isn't actually quite finished. Basic theme is to highlight the pressure women have to look beautiful, the temporary nature of beauty and the sisyphean task of maintaining that against the decaying nature of age. The lady in question is an actress friend of mine, who is actually in her late 40s and I wasn't deliberately trying to make her look younger - she is quite well preserved. Obviously there's more to it than that but I'm not sitting here typing an essay

The next shot along is a closer crop.

Your link is borked mate.

Edit: Fixed

Great idea! Colour looks a little contrasty on my monitor if I'm being picky. I know it isn't finished, but the background is quite dark compared to the pale flower/skin. That might be your intention though.


Oooh, nice word.

Broken or refusing to let you see it?

Try this one

http://www.davidjboughton.com/main.php?g2_itemId=2761

Hmmm, there is quite a bit of contrast in the actual painting but it's definitely being amplified in the pictures. What if you click the little "show full size" tab up the top of the image?

Beautiful painting DB - but why the hell isn't it called "Gilding the Lily"?

Thinking about it the contrast is alright, it's the ladies right cheek being tonally similar to the inside of the lily that makes it look a little blown out I think.

I hate being critical, especially when my painting style is so textured and free (I like the paint to run away from me a bit). It's bloody good what you've done so far.

I love how perfectly you manage to make details like the neck and hands look, then the closer I look I see individual hairs, eyeliner, the detail on the lips...really excellent.

I'm open to suggestions and that's a good one. Consider it nicked

Bloody hell, Snappa! The portrait of Nicky Johnston on your site is amazingly lifelike. Astonishing.

I'm still thinking about that and whether to tone down that edge of the flower to make her face stand out a bit more. I'm at a stage now where I'm probably going to walk away and think about it for a week or so, then decide what to do.

Awesome. Absoutely shit hot.

Ah! I've seen Gilding The Lily around your gaff in a much less finished state but hadn't thought hard about what it was saying. Damned fine work Dave.

YOU OUTED HIS REAL NAME ON THE INTERNET! HE IS NOW VULNERABLE TO MAGIC!

Shush Zardaz.

Fanks

Tsk, Mr David B Snappa had already done that himself. In his signature, and websites and stuff.

Mighty unusual surname that, and most appropriate to his chosen career.

Like if you'd been called Mr D. Pervert.

A landscape painting I've almost finished. It's 25cm x 100cm. I quite like the widescreen format of this. I started this ages ago and left it half finished for about a year or so. Decided to get it finished in my new "get things done" phase.

Good grief, man. I swear that's a photo you've put through a filter in Photoshop.

Excellent work. I'd buy that for numerous dollars

That's absolutely incredible!

Wow!

You missed a bit on the left.



Awesome work as ever, sir.

"I love it!"

That will be great once you've put the space monsters in.

Fantastic stuff again, DB.

I'm always amused when artists hide little easter eggs in their paintings.

Excellent work; both of you!

I left an Easter egg in your Mum.

And he's grown up to be a lovely brother, thank you.

DavPaz is your brother?

In a purely ecumenical sense, yes.

No, he means he's black.

Brilliant.

Fanks chaps.

My Craster, you've lost some weight since I last saw you — them pesky badgers getting faster are they

While it's a perfectly good picture, I have to say it doesn't come close to your portraits.

S'OK, it's not meant to, but I need a break from painting faces from time to time and I like the colour discipline of doing pictures like these. It's all a learning curve, anyhoo and I needed to break my antipathy for working with green paint, which has some very odd characteristics

[edit] Also, it's a question of scale, obviously. My portraits are life size, this is about 1:20 or more so it's impossible to do anything other than impressionistic. For me it was more about the colour variations. I suppose if I had the space I could take bits of that and do them lifesize and they would come across as quite abstract colour field paintings.

Excellent work DB, I wish I had even just a small portion of your talent.

West coast of Ireland, near Sligo. Oil on canvas 75cm x 150cm

Very calming scene. Nicely done as always, Snappa.

Was this a commision or just for yourself?

Lovely. Colours are perfect, especially that grass.

@Z — done for myself. I've got three in total on the go, this one is pretty much finished bar a few tweaks.

That's just beautiful.