Just finished another portrait avatar image, my but they’re popular this time of year. This one was a bit different though so I thought it deserved a mention. I’ve done some interesting ones over the years and this is now one of them. The brief was pretty simple, make me into a God. I’ve had Victorians, I’ve had zombies, I’ve had fairies – but this is the first request for deification.
It was rather more tongue in cheek than an indication of any serious delusions of God-hood, so no cause for alarm. We had a chat about what she was looking for exactly, thought about how to go about it and what kind of God she wanted to be. There are after all, a large number of Gods available to choose from. She wanted more Old Testament traditional, something that would go with the strapline “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me”.
She sent me photos of herself and a couple of religious reference photos to get her ideas across and then it was over to me to turn her into something angelic and divine. I used a number of layers in Paintshop to get the different effects of clouds, translucency and light. Then I also added oil on water shimmers to the edge of her dress, just to give that ethereal quality. She said she needed it done by Christmas, so I pulled out the stops and did it for her in less than a day, which gave her enough time to send it to a printer’s and have it put onto canvas. That’s going to be one heck of an interesting portrait for the wall, although saying that, she does have kids so I guess it kind of fits.
Jack Knight Graphics 