Guess who? by Gerhard Ritter

You are either incredibly well connected? Or extremely good at copying pictures. If the latter, why copy? you can obviously paint well so why not be creative.

Sylvia, I don't quite understand that - Gerhard Ritter is a professional Australian portrait painter, I don't get where copying comes in; where a painting has been based on a photo, he says so... I haven't understood your point....

By way of explanation - in another life I did a lot of cartooning and I have taken this into my painting on occasions. In Australia we have an annual art competition called The Bald Archy and since teaching myself to paint in oils I have entered this competition and been successful in reaching the finals every year from 2004 on. Mr. B, the subject of this painting, is so prominent here as elsewhere, that I felt I might include him in a future entry so I developed this piece from a publicity shot the his company had released at one time. (All my own work - and no plagiarism or copyright involved.)

Gerhard ,I stand corrected and I apologise. I have looked at a lot of your paintings and admired them. I think as I get older I have become so jaundiced at obvious copying from magazines that I made a sweeping judgment about yours. Please. I shall crawl under my heap of canvases. Thank you Robert for pointing that out. Sylvia XX

Sylvia - all is forgiven - Robert - did you say professional - I only wish. BTW - have a look at my blog http://ritterart.blogspot.com/ to see where I'm at.

My first thought was Richard Branson Gerhard.