: Could this photo-realistic Morgan Freeman painting really be done like this on an iPad? I saw a video of a Morgan Freeman Finger Painting on YouTube. Could this be a real video showing how

@Dunderdale640

It is fake.

In fact, at the end of the job, he is just erasing the paint, revealing the original painting that is under. Where people think that he is actualy adding final details. Done. The planet si fouled. :)

You can check other works of the artist and you can see that none of them is like that.
In some video tutorial, the artist revealing that for the details is using the "technique" were erase some paint and blend the work with the origina photo details.

In this Morgan Frieman "panting" case.... the artist erased everything painted, not just some detail areas.

Also, you can compare original photo with the "painting" and you will see that there is not even one pixel difference betwen them.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Kaufman565

Short answer: in the 200 hours (!) quoted, this could be done by any reasonably skilled graphic artist * by using an app with layers and layer opacity, adding the photo as a layer, and "tracing" it, zooming in super close on each detail then zooming out to take screenshots that make the final video. Alternatively, it could be done with difficulty by a very skilled artist copying from the photo.

It shouldn't be surprising that it's done on an iPad app - people do photo-realistic images with pencils or paints (example), whereas a good art app on any modern system has zoom, layers, undo buttons, colour pickers...

* That doesn't mean it'd be "easy" - you'd need plenty of experience with the software, general art skill, a good eye, absurd amounts of patience and a spare 200 hours that you're happy to spend creating something that already exists... but you wouldn't need the Stephen Wiltshire-like unique talent that people credit that guy with.



Long answer:

Re. theories like that he erased a painting to reveal the photo: this would be harder than just painting it. For example - how would you remove only the white hair tips from a beard, leaving everything else untouched, leaving no tell-tale marks? It'd be easier to not cheat - brush on some hairs then touch it up.

This could be done with the only "tricks" being:


The guy has a lot of time on his hands. It says 200 hours - like an hour a day for over half a year. That's enough time for this level of detail (for someone talented, skilled and very very patient!).
It's an animation made from a series of screenshots. Between the screenshots, there would be a lot of zooming in, zooming in further, switching between layers, undoing, re-doing, colour picker, etc etc. None of the detail would be painted while zoomed fully out.
Good judgement and a good eye. Copying from a photograph isn't too hard so long as you a) have a very good eye for detail, which judging by his other work, this guy does, and b) you have a lot of time and patience.
Lots and lots of hard work and patience. Maybe that's what people struggle to believe!
Possibly also, digital tracing:


For example, he might have the photo as a layer, each level of detail as a layer, and then when working on a particular detail (such as beard hair tips), he hides all the other layers, puts the opacity of the photo down, and "traces" that detail on a layer above it
Traditional artists who do photo-realistic drawings and paintings often use a technique similar to this, putting the original through a projector (or, in the olden days, a camera obscura) and then basically tracing the projection.
This would be like that, but much easier. It could be seen as cheating - though personally I don't see the point of re-creating a photo anyway, the photo already exists... and accurate tracing is not much different to the camera obscura trick which plenty of acclaimed artists are believed to have used (e.g. Canaletto)
Tracing like this could be a good learning exercise for an artist, since you would systematically notice every tiny difference between your work and the original. You'd learn a lot about what details your eye normally overlooks. To me this seems more worthwhile than what could otherwise be described as the world's slowest copy & paste...



Regarding the "Wow it's photo-realistic yet it's done on an iPad!" reaction - while it's not an ideal tool, people have for years created photo realistic paintings with canvas and a box of paints, which would be much more difficult. ProCreate (the good art app on iPad) has unlimited zoom, undo, layers... all things traditional artists didn't have.

I'm surprised that he chose to do all this with a finger (or more likely, a stylus) when he could have used a pen tablet like a Wacom or a Galaxy Note, but even taking that into account, he's still got many advantages over traditional artists.

I also imagine the 200 hours would have been less painful with a tablet on the sofa or train or wherever than sat at a desk...



Still find it hard to believe? Okay. Suppose you can't imagine how someone could paint such a lifelike mole on a face. It's such a small detail!

Now imagine the task again, but you've zoomed in so far on the photo that this one mole completely fills the screen. You're building it up one layer at a time. You've done the overall shape: your current task is to trace every dimple, pore and shade in dark tones. Then, in another layer over that, you're going to trace every light highlight and reflection.

Then you're going to use a button to toggles between your whole painting and the photo so you can spot any tiny differences and details you missed, and if necessary, add another layer to trace them. Any time you can undo, or erase a mistake you made in one layer without touching any other layer.

You don't even need to mix paint - the colour picker tool can pick the exact colours from the photo.

Suddenly it doesn't seem so hard - just time consuming.

Vote Up Vote Down