Portrait

This piece was done in tribute to my father. He was an artist, trained in art schools around the country, working much of his life as a commercial artist, doing too few art pieces just for art's sake. One of the last pictures he painted was of an Native American, which is why this subject was picked.

It is painted from a black and white photographic print that was in my parent's collection. Though I am pretty sure it is a famous photograph, I don't know who the photographer was or who is depicted. The photo was taken in the late 1800's or early 1900's. Curtis took many photographs of various Native Americans during this time, but I couldn't find this one in the books I have of his works. If anyone recognizes this and knows the photographer and/or the person depicted, please let me know.

This was painted in Photoshop LE using a Wacom tablet using the photo as reference. Very little was changed from the photgraph, except of course this is in color and the background was changed a little to give a subtle halo effect which was how many Christian martyrs were depicted in ancient paintings.

I am most pleased with the textures in the face which took many, many hours of work, working much larger than submitted here. I made this an exercise in textures, and some parts I am pleased with and others not so much. The face was done mostly with dodge and burn which worked well, though using different colors would have given it more life and made it less monotone. Though not a particulary creative work (as I mainly stuck to the photographer's image), I am pretty pleased with how this came out technically.

As always, critique and comments are welcomed and appreciated.