Crushes on long-dead gentlemen

[pjthompson]

norilana brought this up in her blog, so I thought I'd make my confession here. Some years back I was looking for a face to base the description of a character on (not Caius, in case you're wondering), and I came across this guy. He was in a Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog I had, and they'd sampled his portrait from this larger painting.

This guy was perfect, and I found myself really captivated by his image, wondering who he was...sigh. But I really wanted a picture of him looking up "at the camera," so I decided to get fancy. I began looking for someone with golden eyes (because the character had golden eyes) and lo and behold, I came across another long-dead gentleman. This is Albrecht Durer's self-portrait of himself at 28. (Talk about a hunky LDG.)

So I got busy in photoshop (actually an older cousin called Color It!) and came up with this guy. Okay, so I'm no Petrus Christus or Albrecht Durer. I look at the paint job today and it looks pretty crummy, but at the time I was quite carried away. Can you say compulsive? Obsessive? I knew you could. I had a lot of time on my hands, what can I say?

I no longer look for pictures to base my descriptions on. I don't know why, but I don't seem to need to do it anymore. But it is a fun game sometimes.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I absolutely loved looking at portraits in galleries in Europe. Seeing real faces looking back at me, surrounded by symbols of personality and life.

One of the many reasons modern art just doesn't do it for me. But then it doesn't have to any more, as we have photography.

[pjthompson]

True. And I love photography, but the portraits have a life of their own that's somehow missing from all except the greatest photographic portraits (the ones, I guess, that are character shots as well as snapshots). The portraits generally speak to me more--and I guess it's that character thing. Sitting for weeks painting someone, you're going to pick up on a lot of that person's character, I think.

[norilana.livejournal.com]

You and me both, Sherwood!