Yesterday I Tweeted the photo above and after looking at it for almost 12 hours straight, I still can't decide if the artist is messing with everyone or not. He says that he took the photo on the right and that the picture on the left is actually a drawing that he made using only 8 pens that he bought in a grocery store. When he first showed them on Reddit, people clamored for him to video himself drawing because no one believes him. I'm not sure, but it is fun to speculate. Drawing on the left. Photo on the right. Believe him?
I dunno if I believe him but if it's true he should be making BANK.
ReplyDeleteShit. I need to find him. I want him for our studio!
ReplyDeleteI believe they are not the same--look at her top lip.
ReplyDeleteThe left looks like an illustration to me.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few telltale signs that the picture on the right is a drawing - especially the mouth and hair are obvious. Whether he did it with 8 regular pens is debatable though.
ReplyDeleteEither way, the girl is stunning!
Pretty clear to me the one on the left is the drawing. I guessed after reading the headline and before reading the paragraph.
ReplyDeleteLook at the eyes and cheekbones and hair between the two to see the difference.
@disco- are we in the same biz? What studio?
ReplyDeleteI would need to see a higher-resolution scan than this for pen strokes. If it is a freehand drawing and not a tracing or a photoshop filterfest, this guy's a prodigy.
ReplyDelete(The photo is on the right, Maja. :) )
I wonder if you overlaid one on top of the other if the freckles would all perfectly match up.
ReplyDeleteI believe him. You can tell which is which. The freckles on her nose, her nose in general is the tell for the picture on the left.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't know about the pens but the drawing/photo thing I see quite clearly. There's an obvious difference.
ReplyDeleteNorman Rockwell would use a projector to trace his paintings from a photo onto canvas. Andrew Wyeth did portraits showing this kind of detail in each strand of hair.
ReplyDeleteI find it very difficult to believe that he did this using pens because of the way the hair is layered on top of the background. It's hard to tell though, just from a photo of it.
Incredible artist...but yes. After looking, you can tell the one on the left is the drawing. YOu can tell by the lighting on the hair. The photo, the hair in the back fades...not in the drawing.
ReplyDeleteI'm an artist and I find it hard to believe that the picture on the left is done with pens. The amount of shading makes it look more like colored pencils or photoshop. I'd have to see his other works to see if he could achieve these subtleties with pens.
ReplyDeleteI'm skeptical, but it's kind of amazing if it's true.
More of his stuff....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/23/samuel-silvas-amazing-pho_n_1822572.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
It's true and it's not that big of a deal. I've actually seen better.
ReplyDeleteI MEANT LEFT!!! I SWEAR!!! *L*
ReplyDeleteThis is real, you can find him on DeviantArt. Not all of his drawings are this good though.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can't even draw a stick figure. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteI was an art major as an undergrad and used to be pretty decent in the realism genre with black/white/gray mediums like pencil, ink and charcoal. Color was not my strength. I believe him (although not sure about the grocery store pen claim) and think he is incredibly talented. Wow.
ReplyDeleteLooked at all the drawings. Stunning.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking at his other works (thanks for the link) I have to say that he has mastered a very difficult technique. You can see the cross hatching in some of his other works.
ReplyDeleteFor a lawyer/hobbiest artist, his technique, rather than his overall creativity, is what is amazing.
It's not just pens...it's bic pens. The colored ones from the grocery store.
ReplyDeleteThe backstory is that the guy is a lawyer, and draws for fun. He has a deviantart page here:
http://vianaarts.deviantart.com
Pretty neat. On his page you can see the pen texture on her neck, but dunno - that eye is so sharp it looks like it's with an L lens.
He is very talented, but I don't think he is a prodigy. It's clear that it is a drawing. I don't know if it is regular store bought pens. I just can't see him getting such smooth transitions and that much control over a cheap pen. Not that people haven't done amazing things with ball point pens, but just writing with those cheap pens there are clumps of ink or light spots. I would love to see a video of him doing it though and I would gladly eat my words to watch him create something.
ReplyDeleteEm - We're working on getting a 3D studio off the ground - Dead Panic Studios. We only have a facebook page at present. We specialize in assets and artwork for video games, movies, and comics. We have some concept art up on the page if you want to check it out!
ReplyDeleteI believe it. My daughter is an fantastic artist. She can do lifelike portraits (caricatures) just as well as this.
ReplyDeleteThe art on his deviant page is stunning. How does he do that with a Bic pen??
ReplyDeleteWow Enty you're giving me a twilight zone moment! I saw this as mod pick on Deviantart the other day. I've got it saved on my IPad bc THAT is the elusive shade of red hair that I would dye (haha I made a funny) to have!
ReplyDeleteI think it's real, but I'd like to know what pens he used. Art supplies are expensive, so I too play the dollar store stationary aisle for art supplies game, lol. Doesn't always work the best for me but I make do. I can do nice things with Bic pens because they feather beautifully, but I can't make my pen strokes this subtle yet.
Of course it could always be a digital thing, but I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt. His fingers are probably sore as hell.
Oh I didn't see that he used Bic pens, lol. Yes they feather very very well...but you'll get ink all over your fingers. When you get used to them you can kind of tell when they're about to spit ink at you and you can move it over to a scrap piece of paper until it starts to flow smoothly again.
ReplyDeleteI believe it for sure, and envy him his ability.
ReplyDeleteI saw this someplace on the internet. The drawing is the one on the left. Amazing as it seems.
ReplyDelete@disco, I'm on my way. Good luck!
ReplyDelete@disco, wow, Ivar's work is awesome! I really like that. Giving you a "like"!
ReplyDeletei'VE SEEN THE GUY MAKE ART WITH FRENCHFRIES AND KETCHUP FROM mCDONALDS. Ooops sorry for the caps - at work - anyway - this is amazing but i don't see how the coloring can be so exact with pens. That eye and the hair are perfect. PS: this is how I picture myself, or would like to - all wild red hair and freckles - only I have green eyes. Alas... I do not look like this LOL
ReplyDeleteSOrry - confusing first sentence above. The caps are because I am at work and keep my pc on all caps all the time. The french fry guy was my example that people with the talent can pretty much do anything... so I believe this is drawn.
ReplyDeleteEm! Thank you!! Yes, he is an AMAZING artist. We have such a talented group. I'm really lucky to be involved with such a great group of artists.
ReplyDeleteEm - What line of work are you in? If I'm not being too nosey...
ReplyDeleteAnd, you know.. you're all welcome to go like the page as well. :)
ReplyDeleteDead Panic Studios.
Tell your friends.
His pictures were posted on the Daily Mail site this morning. Like some of the commenters, I would like to know how he makes the white whiskers on the cats.
ReplyDeleteThis can't have been done with just bic pens.. There is at the very least some digital work on this.
ReplyDeletewait..I want to clarify...if he did indeed use only bic pens then there would have had to have been other materials used and/or PS to get the effects he's got in this work...
ReplyDeleteI spotted it too. I cannot define why the left one looks like a drawing but the right certainly looks like a photo.
ReplyDeleteTurkish: You should use some of your duaghters artwork as your avatar.
ReplyDeleteSherry: I'm a spaz with avatars. I'm helpless at resizing pictures.
ReplyDeleteApparently, I'm the only one who looked at it and thought "20 minutes with photoshop and I can make the photo on the right look like the 'drawing' on the left." A few filters, a few tools that are usually used to make alterations like magazine cover models to make it look 'just a bit off' and voila!
ReplyDeleteThat said, I've seen amazing artists do amazing things. If this guy has anything showing process stages? I'd believe it. But if there's no "this is what it looked like 1/3 finished" shot? You have to ask yourself why.
@TurkishTaffy I use Irfanviewfor resizing and putting rudimentary copyright marks on my art and sketches. It's free and not a resource hog at all. I couldn't function without it. :)
ReplyDeleteCorrection: Irfanview [space] for.....lol.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCoriander Shea, look at Natural Instincts and L'Oreal Preference for that shade of red.
ReplyDeleteReally? I'll have to look again. I thought they did away with this shade in the early 2000s bc it went out of style. Garnier Fructisse and Hydrience used to make the most perfect shades....
ReplyDeleteThank you. :)
Ive seen artwork like this before. Its awesome!!
ReplyDeleteI believe him, looks like a drawing on the left.
ReplyDeleteCheck out Bec Winnel on Instagram. She draws the most detailed portraits of beautiful faces. They're amazing.
ReplyDeleteMaybe that priest in the Spanish church should have called this guy instead of allowing that 80-year-old lady to "restore" that Jesus painting.
ReplyDeleteYou can tell the one on the left is the drawing because of the limited color palette. The face, the hair and the lips all use the same color red, whereas in the photo, her skin has a yellow undertone and her lips have a pink tone that the drawing doesn't have. Also, the drawn hair looks drawn.
ReplyDeleteI can draw this well (although I normally use pencil). I completely believe he can do this with regular ballpoint pens. He's not doing anything (except by hand) that a color printer doesn't do. You just layer the ink in varying opacity.
The thing to keep in mind is that he's not whipping these babies out in 45 minutes. A photo-realistic drawing takes weeks and a very intense amount of concentration.
Also, this is how you make white lines on a drawing: you take a sharp instrument (like either an extremely hard lead pencil, or in his case, probably a pen with the tip retracted) and etch the lines into the paper. As long as you're careful, the white lines will stay white.
ReplyDeleteAnother trick: To get the texture of brick, rub over brick.
When I read enough to know that one was an illustration and one was a photo, my first thought was that the one on the left was the illo. I had a discussion on my FB page about stuff like this recently. Video Games (fake by definition) are looking more and more real, and movies (fake too, but at least "real" scenery and backdrops used to be present) are now looking, to me, more and more .fake (due to so much CGI and HD technology being made use of). I don't dig it. Just my two cents.
ReplyDeleteAs an artist i can see that It is a drawing on the left....great technique like many have mentioned...but not a really precise duplicate....
ReplyDeleteWow I am looking at it on my iPhone and I can only tell that overall the one on the left looks brighter than the one on the right. Another plug for irfanview--it's a free program and its batch capabilities are what I use heavily. Batch crop, batch resize.
ReplyDeleteI love Infranview too! I've been using it for eons.
ReplyDeleteThe one on the left definitely looks like a drawing to me. I can't get over the grocery store pen claim, though.
Mr. Tamarind would like to comment-Total Bullshit, I'm not buying it. How could you get that flesh color with a bic pen with no visible lines..?
ReplyDeleteJesus, you had to stare at that for 12 hours? It took me less than a second. It's pretty obvious if you know, you have eyeballs.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm sure this guy loves how a bunch of laypeople are judging whether or not he could accomplish this drawing. What a joke! Stick to what you know, folks.
ReplyDelete