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by Marc Dalessio

Distance in Portraiture

At work on a full-length portrait in Palazzo Corsini

I’m currently working on one of the larger portraits I’ve ever painted. I also have very little time to do it as the sitter is about to have a baby. Luckily the room where I’m working is the largest room I’ve ever had to do a portrait commission in, and it is so much easier to paint fast when you have this amount of distance to see the model from.

Here is a quick time lapse film of the first four days. A last minute idea using my cellphone camera, so the quality is not the best. The jumps in progress are because the battery kept dying…

 

by Marc Dalessio

Time-lapse portrait

An old film of a portrait sketch, finished in about 2 hours and a photo was taken every brushstroke. The ‘model’ was actually a professional photographer who had an appointment pushed back an hour and came over to kill time in my studio. I had to paint the portrait (fast), remember to take a photo after every brushstroke (using my point and shoot), and keep him entertained.

This winter we’ll have artificial light in the studio and I want to try a long project time-lapse film. With natural light the colors change a lot over the course of a day and the changing hue is too distracting when sped up.