Paul by Neal McDannel

Wow!

Wow indeed. Fantastic portrait painter

Neal, you are incredibly talented at pastel at work with your gallery having plenty of examples of that, not least this superb, photo realistic rendition, everything about this is excellent, the skintone, glasses, everything, in fact it is a an inspiration!

I think this portrait shows enormous and impressive skill levels in portrait painting. However, I am always slightly confused by paintings that look like photographs. This has clearly taken so much dedicated work but, if I have to be honest, it fails to tell me something that a photograph would not. I hope you see what I mean. I am not trying to denigrate your work in the slightest, but am more interested in your motivation for producing such a photo realistic painting.

Thea, I appreciate your observation and the time you took to write it, Thank you. I most like to draw, I like to create an image through my drawing. I feel I can finesse details better through drawing then in other mediums. I do like to take pictures and I like to manipulate them in photoshop. As an artist you have to pick your final, completed form of expression. For me it is my pastel drawing in part because I feel it is the best way to present my work In part because the pastel work has received more attention than my photographs. My final quick observation to your inquiry is that you would have to see the two actual pieces, photograph and drawing, finished next to each other and then tell me that the drawing fails to tell you something that the photograph couldn't. If you (and I) still felt the photograph to be just as strong or God forbid, stronger, than the drawing, then I would need to rethink my chosen medium. Again thank you, Neal.

Ros P thank you and thank all of you for your comments.

Just an added comment Neal, following on from Thea's comment, I find photo realism fascinating, see my comment that I have left over on the photo thinking it was this pastel drawing, to me it is how you did this, the pastel pencil strokes you made to achieve this that is part of the joy, and by enlarging it on my iPad screen enabled me to see your actual pencil strokes and to get an inkling of the colours used that will stay with me as I do more pastel portraits amongst my pet pastel portraits, I love really good watercolour, oil, and pastel work, there is room in art for all of us, the kick I get from what I consider to be really good art comes from all the variations of the three main mediums.

I missed this and was alerted to it by the ref photo you posted. This is excellent and I have to say shows more emotion and intensity than the photo, so I think you achieved what you set out to do. Can I ask on what surface this was painted? I use Art Spectrum Colourfix for animals and wondered what you used.

It's drawn on a middle grade sandpaper. There are finer papers and courser ones. You could find it easy using a search engine, "pastel sand papers".

I agree with Hazel, this portrait feels more real than the photo...very well done.

I agree with Hazel, this portrait feels more real than the photo...very well done.