At this point, iPad art is old hat, appearing eveywhere from New Yorker covers to art galleries. But yesterday, U.K.-based illustrator Kyle Lambert posted a truly stunning video on YouTube of him creating an incredibly photorealistic portrait of Morgan Freeman, which he claims is the "world's most realistic finger painting."
The video was made on an iPad Air, Lambert says, using an app called Procreate, which allows the user to make super-high-res illustrations on their iPad and export the entire process as an HD video. In all, he says it took him 285,000 brush strokes and over 200 hours to finish the work.
Judging by the comments sections of the world, however, not everyone is convinced the illustration is genuine, with some skeptics pointing out that the final portrait is indistinguishable from the Scott Gries photo that it was based on. But Lambert has said in multiple interviews that he didn't cheat. He told Gizmodo:
To answer your question, no at no stage was the original photograph on my iPad or inside the Procreate app. Procreate documents the entire painting process, so even if I wanted to import a photo layer it would have shown in the video export from the app.
The key to painting accurate detail at this obsessive level is to break down the portrait into much smaller paintings that are more achievable. Once you do that, the detail becomes easier to manage. However, the consequence of this is that the overall painting then takes a lot longer to complete.
Lambert was trained as a traditional oil painter, and has done work for a large range of commercial and editorial clients, including Apple, BBC Television and GQ.
Via Daring Fireball
@TheStromboShow