26-year-old iPad artist Kyle Lambert has created an ultra-realistic finger painting of Hollywood star Morgan Freeman. If you put Lambert’s painting and Freeman’s photograph side-by-side, it’s almost impossible to tell them apart. The features are practically lifelike, down to the last freckle.
The British artist from Cheshire took one month and used 285,000 finger strokes on his iPad to complete the painting. He used an application called Procreate that allowed him to zero-in and layer his work. Using the app’s features, he reduced the brush size to only a few pixels for extra precision. This enabled him to zoom in to apply stroke after stroke, producing the amazing, photo-like portrait.
Lambert says that Procreate was crucial to his finger painting process. “It captures every brush stroke automatically and you can export it to the camera roll,” he explains. “It has the best canvas size and video export. It’s the most like Photoshop.”
The time lapse video of Lambert’s creation gives us a better understanding of how he went about it. The video has gone viral online, receiving over 4 million views.
However, critics are skeptical about the authenticity of the video and Lambert’s work. Many have pointed out that apps like Procreate allow users to add images or photographs and set them as paintings. It could be that the step-by-step video is played backwards to create the desired effect.
But Lambert silences critics with his obvious passion towards his finger paintings. “I get very involved in my process so spend a lot of time each day on the painting,” he says. “I was spending nine to ten hours some days if a certain area I was working on was complicated.”
Kyle Lambert has been using the iPad for painting since 2010, inspired by legendary British artist David Hockney. Hockney had used Apple’s tablet to make a painting that same year. Lambert’s first work of art on the iPad was a recreation of the Toy Story 3 poster, which was featured on the Apple Mac website. The creators of the iPad were so impressed that they invited Lambert to speak at the Macworld Conference in San Francisco.
Since then, Lambert has made portraits of several celebrities such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, David Beckham and Jennifer Anniston. You can see his work evolving; over time, his portraits have become more and more realistic. His latest portrait is of Morgan Freeman, which seems to be a quantum leap forward. “I think I must have been watching the movie Oblivion when the idea of Morgan Freeman came to mind,” he says.
I wonder if Freeman has seen Lambert’s work yet. I do think the time lapse video would be complete with a voiceover narration by the legendary actor!
We’ve featured Kyle’s work in the past, but this awe-inspiring masterpiece simply needed a post of its own.
via: Daily Mail
