Dru Blair’s Art of Technology.

1. Camilla
   May 22nd, 2007 at 9:44 am

   It’s not a digital painting, it’s a traditional painting.

   And it’s absolutely amazing!

2. John Giotta
   May 22nd, 2007 at 10:26 am

   I think its a fraud.
   The detail way to exact… its the photo just reprinted.
   Even the unfocused hairs are painted.

3. UFO
   May 22nd, 2007 at 11:05 am

   Impressive, very impressive !!

   It really looks like a photo!

4. Retrokatze
   May 22nd, 2007 at 11:22 am

   Wasn’t that featured on Neatorama before?

5. chichas
   May 22nd, 2007 at 11:27 am

   can’t you see they decomposed a normal photo and reversed the order? that’s absolutely fake

6. Denita TwoDragons
   May 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 am

   My brain keeps trying to tell me that it’s just a photo. Oh my goodness, this blows everything I’ve ever done right out of the water!

   –TwoDragons

7. Catherine
   May 22nd, 2007 at 11:33 am

   I don’t know…
   To be honest, I won’t fully believe it until it’s right in front of me.
   Now, I know nothing about airbrushing, but even with works done with airbrushing, there’s a sense that ‘Yes, this is a painting, and not a photograph’. Even with photorealistic works, something hints at how much time and patience the artist took to get that far.
   And the more I look at it, the more it seems amiss. In classical painting with a brush, it’s recommended that for portraits you fill the entire canvas with one neutral tone so you can compare it to the light and dark areas on the figure, and make it easier to fill in. Here, it’s just blotches of colour that slowly fill in to make a face. Photograph or not, I’m not completely convinced.

8. Jon
   May 22nd, 2007 at 12:03 pm

   This guy needs to invest in a camera. Mine can create the same image in a fraction of the time it took him. AND I bet he doesn’t have USB 2.0 compatibility!

9. Tom
   May 22nd, 2007 at 4:55 pm

   Gee - if this is a painting - I wonder why he
   made her back teeth discolored and not “whitened”?

   can you say - faker?

10. Josh
    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:00 pm

    This guy has a lot of skill in recreating the real world, but I can’t really see what it has to do with art. Impressive none the less.

11. Cris
    May 22nd, 2007 at 5:32 pm

    Totally fake. The “making of photos” look nothing like a real painting. Whoever made this, doesn’t understand how portraits are actually made. They took a photo and went backwards in the “making of” pics by taking away sections of the photo.

12. Fred
    May 22nd, 2007 at 7:53 pm

    obvious fake…

13. anonymous
    May 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 am

    the making of images show airbrush art in progress — he might simply have a weird technique. since he’s working from photos, he can take the elements to a high degree of finish without working on the piece as a whole.

    but, this would be unheard of in terms of the extraordinary level of realism and detail achieved.

    it may be total BS as so many suggest. there’s even a 2005 thread on snopes.com message board about the veracity of the claim.

    a couple thoughts:

    - artists who paint planes and nature or both typically are not as adept at painting people. artists who paint figures and nudes typically are not as good at perspective and draftsmanship as some other artists who do not typically paint/draw from the figure are.

    it is very rare for someone to achieve MORE realism with the human form than they normally achieve in their typical oeuvre — in this fellow’s case he’s known for paintings of planes and nature scenes; not photo-real humans and his typical work is very realistic, but not so overtly photo-real as the “Tica” portrait.

    - the artist mentions some techniques he uses to create the realism: split fristket, the “etcetera” technique and his shield-reveal technique. none of these terms are mentioned anywhere else on the web — not by attendees of his seminars; not by other airbrush or photorealist painters — nowhere but on this one “Tica” page on the artist’s site. it seems improbable that these techniques would not be cross-referred to anywhere else IF they allowed an artist to obtain such mind-bending realism and detail.

    - the photo of the artist and two other gentlemen posed in front of the “Tica” painting — note that the image runs right to the edge of the substrate. this is very atypical of air brush art. most air brush art is created on illustration board and the work is created with substantial untouched (white) borders that are typically either cropped later or omitted in photo-reproductions. this is very odd that the image runs right to the edge as though it were cropped. most artists who keep (or sell) the original would not crop this image down like this; they would either frame or matte it and the cropping would produce a piece larger than the image area (which is VISUALLY cropped by a frame or matte). it’s pretty weird to put all this time into it and then chop it down right to the edge like that.

    Ultimately, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. this image and the controversy around it (and the artist) has been floating around on the web for 2 years and there’s no extraordinary proof at all.

14. Jacki
    May 23rd, 2007 at 1:59 am

    If he could produce a piece of art of that caliber, why isn’t he world reknown or selling his pieces for a great hefty load of money.

    I’ve been playing around with digital painting for 5 years and from all the people I have met, all of them use similar steps as with traditional. Generally the same at least.

    This is pretty impossible to recreate in traditional with his “pencil crayon skin texturing”. I can see how it would be possible as a digital painting though… but its still unlikely lol.

15. weymes
    May 23rd, 2007 at 7:38 am

    ive looked at this for ages , and im convinced its a fake.. photorealism is an interesting type of art, but check out the work of legendary photorealists like chuck close.. and even though those paintings are super real. theres still something about them that tells you its a painting.. and the subject matter of this is so cheesy.. in my opinion not art at all.. i cant get my head around it.

16. Sid Morrison
    May 23rd, 2007 at 8:10 am

    I think it’s real. Apparently, he is pretty well known within the genre, and he created this with a lot of people around during the process AND the finished product can be examined.

    If you read the guy’s writeup, he says that the whole point of the thing was to test the limits of his abilities (after he used its beginning as a tool for training his students in a seminar). It’s apparently *not* his normal deal to repaint photographs of models. Rather, it is to realistically paint things that cannot be easily photographed (like the jet fighter at near ground-level).

17. Kels
    May 23rd, 2007 at 3:20 pm

    Nice to see Dru Blair on neatorama. my dad has a ton of his aircraft prints- all amazingly detailed airbursh artworks. The guy and his work are the real deal.

18. andy
    May 23rd, 2007 at 6:28 pm

    Hmmm…I’m incredibly skeptical.

19. portilaj
    May 23rd, 2007 at 11:33 pm

    I was pretty skeptical of this so…

    I took the ‘10 hour’ image posted here: http://www.drublair.com/comersus/store/workshops/images/tica_incomplet esm.jpg
    And the ‘final’ portion shown here: http://www.drublair.com/comersus/store/workshops/images/ticastepwebbig .jpg

    I brought them both into photoshop and placed the ‘final’ on top of the 10-hour to see how they line up and what the differences are… and they don’t line up. It’s close, but by matching up the reflections in the eyes you can see many subtle differences not just in the color ( which was unfinished in the 10-hour version ) but also in the perspective ( the 10-hour appears to be slightly ’skewed’ in comparison with the top narrower then the bottom ) and in the size and angle of several features ( hair, ears, nostril, etc… )

    My conclusion: There was definitely a painting made. the ‘10 hour’ image shows a stage of that painting. But the high-res close up shown at drublair.com is NOT the final version of that painting, it is from the original source photograph that was projected onto the canvas for the original trace. Hence the skewing and the slightly different positions and angles.

20. Michael
    May 24th, 2007 at 12:23 am

    This is a REAL airbrushed painting by Dru!! Honest, I am an airbrush artist and actually own one of Dru Blair’s Airbrushed paintings. He is not a wizard or fraud or anything like that. He is just an incredible artist who is a master of the tools he uses.

    As far as the person that inferred this wasn’t art, well, I think that you have no idea what art is all about. Dru does work from photo references as do most current day artists, with exception of those who still do some personal sittings or Plein Air work.

    Dru’s artistic talents are far beyond this one example, which he did as an example (with a few others) for his airbrushing class in Florida. I think you ought to see some of his other work of military aircraft or sports celebrities, before you make a determination that Dru is not a true artist.

    Further, if you are that much of a skeptic, check out the step by step lessons on Dru’s site, or better yet, if you really want to be amazed at what he can do, take one of his classes, or check out one of the airbrush shows when one is close to where you live.

    I am passionate about this because most airbrush artists have had a long history of noses in the air at our work. Airbushing is one of the very first forms of art, beginning with the cavemen who blew their staining colors around their own hands in order to leave the impression of the hand. The modern airbrush was first made in the 1800’s and has evolved into one of many tools by “Real Artists!’

    I hope that you will look further into this artform, it will amaze you!
    Michael

21. practicecactus
    May 24th, 2007 at 7:34 am

    It’d be nice if he had some High rez pics of the stages.
    I think that adds to the ‘too good to be true’ vibe.
    It’s like, “some stuff, here and there, and then bam, look it’s done”
    I don’t doubt his skills, but it looks really suspect when the details aren’t shown in stages.

22. Carl
    May 24th, 2007 at 10:44 am

    It doesn’t matter if it is real, or fake, or whatever. If you had bothered to read the information on the link it says that he copied a photograph he took. So yes; the blurred hairs look blurred (he was tracing his own photograph).

    Regardless, this doesn’t mean a thing. He can trace a photograph. Whoopee.

23. tom
    May 24th, 2007 at 3:48 pm

    I don’t believe that’s a painting, even a painting of a photograph. You’ve been had. Period.

24. Alejandro Martinez
    June 16th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

    I just came back from one of Dru Blair’s airbrush workshops in North Carolina and had the chance to see th original painting in person. It’s not very large (a little bit larger than 18″x24″ perhaps) and it’s painted on illustration board. I remember the illustration board was slightly warped from the amount of paint on it. The “Portrait of Tica” was the first thing I saw when I walked into his classroom even though it was kept in a corner of the room, unframed, held up only by pushpins. At first I believed the portrait could not be a real painting, but it was. I could see the telltale marks of slight airbrush spatter in the detailing of the dress and the characteristic softness of the freehand airbrush line in the rendering of the model’s hair. During one his lectures about color theory and the possibilities of the airbrush he showed the students yet another nearly unbelievable example of what could be accomplished. On the walls of his classroom he had what appeared to be two pieces of regular white notebook paper taped to the wall with a pencil drawing of a stick figure on each of them. The only difference between the two was that one was real and the other was painted with an airbrush. It was very hard to tell the difference between the two from as little as a foot away. Almost every student in the class kept walking up to the painted “fake” piece of paper and touching it because every detail on it was so exact from the blue lines of the ruled notebook paper to the look of the graphite stick figure that was supposed to be drawn on it. All the while, Mr. Blair was cracking jokes, giving demonstrations, and acting like it was no big deal at all. His catchphrase throughout the entire time I was there was “It’s so damn easy”, which was said as a way of encouraging his students. But the truth was he was obviously a master at what he was doing.

25. Thom
    June 19th, 2007 at 12:08 am

    I have been to 2 of his classes and have read most of the above and can hopefully shed some light on this.

    It is a painting. When you see it in person, after you have had the class, you can see it is a painting, because you know where to look and what you’re looking for. That said, it is still nothing less than amazing.

    He used mostly opaque paint for this painting, matching up any two progress shots is pointless, because OPAQUE means it covers up, blocks out. This method of painting allows you to completely change anything you want any way you want at any point. So when (not if, when) you make a mistake you can fix it, and some mistakes aren’t evident until other things are done in around them, like the white of the eye is off, but you don’t see it when no of the eye is painted, after you paint some, you realize and move it.

    Techniques he mentioned that you can’t find online. I know I’ve looked also. Ect. principal, split frisket, “skeet”(look harder). They are not found online, because he coined the term for it, made up the name for it, created the method to do it, etc. He didn’t just pull something from another web page, if that was the case you’d be arguing over someone elses painting not one of Dru’s.

    If you looked at this painting and thought, look at the detail, you have seen the ect. principal in action, or put it into action. If you looked at the hair and said no way, you’ve seen the beauty of opaque paint and the split frisket.

    Some one said something about it looking terrible, then in one photo it is completed. Yes, that is generally how it goes and why it is a pain to paint like this until you’re used to it. It looks bad, I mean really bad, like you want to fix it and you haven’t even put down two colors bad, then all of a sudden you’re on your 9th or 10th color, and it looks good, I mean good like you didn’t know you could do. I have progress shots of my stuff, and I can’t figure out how I got to the end of the painting, when I look at the mid steps and think, man this looks like a week old coffee stain, how did I see the end of it. But when you’re painting it, you just do what he teaches, and it works. If that doesn’t make sense, I can’t still get my head wrapped around it that well, so that is why.

    Someone said, it isn’t art, he just copied a photograph. Well by that rule, neither is photography. We’d need another several pages to argue what art is, instead, read this. He said in his class “there is no artistic merit in copying a photograph, it is merely a test of skill.” Point being, how could pollock measure if he was improving, he couldn’t objectivly hold it up to anything and compair or have anyone else look at them. However if you have the skill to copy a photo, you can pretty much do anything, because a blue canvas or some paint smears don’t take as much skill to fool the eye like his paintings.

    Why isn’t he famous? Well, he is, just depends on who you ask and odds are if you looked through all the photos he has painted on his site, for book covers, prints, etc. you have seen them before, you probably just didn’t know they were paintings. I have magazines almost 20 years old that have his paintings, methods, articles in them. Sure he isn’t as popular as thomas kincade, but only one man is, and paintings of houses and foggy streets have more of a mass appeal than airplanes.

    People who paint orgainc subjects can’t paint inorganic, or something like that. Almost always the case, it is kind of comical and sad to see an action star make a dramatic film. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Also in his class, he said he was very good at painting inorganic stuff, jets and things, people were his weak spot, so he worked on it because those were the jobs he was getting the most requests for. Funny how money motivates people to get better at things. Also the method he paints, the subject doesn’t matter (yes really), it is better if you don’t know what you’re painting. Much like grading a paper of a friend, vs the paper of someone you don’t like, if you can add your own subjectivity to it, you will.

    Some additional info. He is the most humble, polite, respectful person around. If you look online, you’ll find on many sites people calling him a fake, fraud, all sorts of impolite names from people suffering from keyboard courage. He actually posts several places online, and address people that call him a names and the questions and comments they have. I asked him how he keeps from wanting to kill people like that (I know if i had someone say some things like on here I would want too) he said something along the lines of “when people give you a compliment, you wonder if they’re being honest or not, hey thats a good painting…gee thanks…but when people are really angry at you and calling you a fake and a fraud and you’re lying, you know they’re being honest because they’re really believing what they say because of what they see.” I thought wow…i’d still want to beat them with a rubber hose though.

    As someone said, his paintings are not in glass frames in a vault 100 yards from the velvt ropes you stand behind. Odds are the prints he sells are in better environments than some of his originals. Tica for instance was on a shelf about 2 feet above where you clean out your airbrushes in his class room, not in a frame, or even a plastic bag, just on the shelf, some of his paintings were push pin held to the wall, not making holes in them but just sitting on the pins.

    I have a pic of Dru and I and he is holding Tica, i asked if he would mind he said no problem and stood there holding the painting. I thought…I ain’t touching it. But when you asked him questions about it, he would just grab it, hold in front of who ever, and explain away. I pulled out my camera and asked if i could take pictures of his paintings, he said please do. After walking around with a 7mp camera and using the zoom lens for all its worth. I thought wow is this rude to be getting as close detailed shots as I can? So I asked, he said no he has the originals out in front of people so they can see how he did them and look up close to get a good look at them to see that they are paintings.

    If you really stop and look at a few of his paintings up close and know what you’re looking for, you can see some things that make it evident they are paintings, even with Tica.

    This does not make them any less impressive, the opposite is true, because you’re so taken in and stunned you don’t even notice until you look that close.

    If you don’t believe it is a painting, and you do any kind of artistic anything, painting, drawing, photoshopping, digital painting, charcoal, color pencil, anything. Take his class, you’ll be glad you did and start noticing things you’ve never seen before in everything around you.

26. Paul_Corfield
    September 6th, 2007 at 2:32 am

    I was a professional airbrush artist for quite a number of years before I switched to painting in oils on canvas. I studied the same techniques as Dru uses and for an airbrush artist who is proficient and using quality equipment it’s not hard to produce work like that. Airbrushers use many techniques to produce the overall photorealistic effect. It’s not at all hard, you just need the patience. After a number of years painting photorealism I got bored of it, I just never felt I was creating anything worthwhile, you soon get fed up of people saying “it looks just like a photograph”. I gave it up photorealism overnight and came up with my own unique style and now painting is a joy everyday of the week.

27. rdx-17
    September 8th, 2008 at 5:25 am

    yeah you can do it whid a mousepen

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