Jack Nicholson. After Annie Leibovitz 
Jack Nicholson portrait painting by James Apichart Jarvis Check out the picture bellow, it is a painting, not a photograph. James Apichart Jarvis embarked on his first attempt at photorealistic portraiture resulting in an outstanding painting of the famous actor.
When talking about this portrait, Jarvis spoke about the challenge it presented, being a self-taught artist.
"I had never done a photorealistic painting before and there was not teacher present to teach me the skills of
paint application. I had always wondered how far I could go, technically, as an artist and I wanted to do
something that would amaze people, the same way I was amazed by the portraits of Chuck Close. So I found
a detailed photograph of Jack Nicholson, taken by Annie Leibovitz, in a Sunday Times Magazine issue a few
years back and began painting".
Starting with a pencil Jarvis, started out by sketching a rough drawing of the actor's face on canvas. Then began the layering and layering of various skin tones. There was one struggle in the process, a perfectly painted eye positioned, wrongly, 2mm to left of where it should be.
"This infuriated me. I kept on painting knowing that there was this slight mistake until it was
almost finished. The eye was perfect, the shape, everything but the positioning was just
off by a near 2mm. I knew it was barely noticeable to the passing eye, but being a natural
perfectionist it burned inside my head. Eventually I redid an area that was effectively
5cm2"
It is this level of detail that has led James onto the path of becoming an artist, after taking a break of three years to study American Studies - another passion of his. He has also recently started an entertaining and informative blog called Art Starting where you can see his current gallery bellow.
http://artstarting.blogspot.com/p/gallery.html
Jarvis is now working on a collection of paintings that he hopes would integrate fine art and design, with the compositional sense of architecture.
James Apichart Jarvis
Blog: http://artstarting.blogspot.com/
Email:
Facebook Fan Page: JamesApichartJarvis
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/JJarvisartist
