Jack creates paintings based on your photos, changing or enhancing colors or other aspects of the photo to make the painting look even better than the original reference photo.

If you wish to have a painting done of something (still life, a nude, landscape, cityscape, etc.) of which you may not have a photo, then Jack can still create a painting by using various reference material. In the above bar still life, for example, Jack was able to paint from a still life that he had set up in his studio.

Appearance Modifications

a camera cannot lie, but an artist is allowed little white lies.

One of the advantages of a painted portrait is that a physical trait of a subject can be enhanced, de emphasized, or changed completely. Here the husband is made slightly taller but to be true to the couple, he is kept shorter than his wife. The same kind of thing can be done if you wished a subject to appear slightly slimmer or take on a slightly more appealing physical quality.

In addition to the height change, the lighting on the wife was changed to bring out her lovely face. The lighting in the reference photo highlighted and made her nose look bigger even though it was not.

Changing the lighting of a reference photo is also very useful when you would like to combine multiple photos, or make a painting more interesting. Dynamic shadowing and lighting can often make an image look more intriguing especially when the reference photo has been taken with flat indoor and/or flash lighting.

A person's expression is one of the differences between a photo and a painting. Quite often a photo will have people smiling with one of those fake "Say Cheese" smiles. (Their lips are smiling, but their eyes are not.) You can't quite tell if they're truly happy, but you can tell they are posing for the camera.

In the case of this eloquent mature couple, the expressions were changed so that they appeared to be more natural. In this example, the expressions were toned down to provide the illusion that the subjects sat down for the painting. (A sitter of a portrait can not be expected to hold a huge smiling expression for hours at a time: i.e. the Mona Lisa with its ever "slight" smile.) This kind of expression would often be preferable in formal portraits, except maybe in portraits of children when it looks better when the kids are exuberantly happy.

Also apparent in the above example is the woman's dress color change as compared to the reference photo. Because the original photo was taken at a wedding, it would have been a faux pas if the woman wore a white dress. However, for the purposes of a portrait, a color change of something is usually a nonissue.

A portrait can use a neutral plain background, as was used in the previous example of the couple, or it could include a detailed background that is not even in any of your reference photos, as was the case in this Collie painting. In this example, the client wished to change the background somehow and was open to suggestions, so Jack provided the client with a sketch of a picket fence, bushes, and flowers in the background. In most cases, including a detailed background provides the portrait with a more finished look.

Often times a portrait is created using a number of reference photos, either because the subjects cannot physically get together to pose for a photo or because, like in the case of the above example, the portrait is a surprise gift for the intended subject. In this example, Jack not only had to use the 4 reference photos pictured above to create this painting, but had to sketch the father's body based on NONE of the provided photos.

As stated above, Jack can change the lighting that falls upon the painting's subjects, which is often needed to make a portrait look natural when creating a portrait based on multiple photos, which was the necessary case for this painting.

Jack entertains most requests, no matter what they are, as is quite obvious from this example. The client's boyfriend was very fond of Jimmy Stewart's "Harvey and Me", a movie of a man who supposedly sees an imaginary 6 foot rabbit. In one scene, a character comes upon a portrait of Jimmy Stewart and the infamous Harvey. The client wished me to superimpose her boyfriend into this portrait and colorize it.

Jack can do most anything whether it be creating a painting of your pets playing cards, a nude portrait with or without a nude reference photo, a different stylized painting, a portrait in color based on an old black and white photo, or even a non-portrait painting, like a landscape/city scene or whatever you wish to have painted.

If you have always wanted something unique, then Jack is your artist.