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Portraits and celebrity obsessions!

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After having conducted some research into current art affairs, I have noticed the increasingly popularity in portraits, be it personal or of celebrities.

In our society the rise of the power of celebrities is the highest it has ever been with our morbid fascinations. This is evident in the growth of celebrity gossip magazines, reality TV and now, some portraits here in the OMM art piece!

Many are really impressed with the portraits drawn on this site, and are often on the leaderboard, but let's ask ourselves why are they so popular? And why in particular, do we like celebrity portraits so much?

As we all have this love of art in common, I would be interested in the OMM society's view on this!

Cat A

Fri 13th Jul, 2007
This is interesting actually, as in my profile I explained how I have never been any good at portraits or figures but decided to give it a go anyway. I think some might think it is the most realistic way of portraying one's self which is why it might be so popular?

Wed 18th Jul, 2007
Well, I'd suggest that its because the world is becoming far more 'people-centric' at least as far as how people think. As the media has gotten larger the concept of fame has become far more appealing - to be famous is to almost like the ultimate 'popular kid' at school. People compare themselves to, aspire to be, hate, love and have worrying obsessions with others because they see more of them. I'll leave the rest of my arguements for later so I've got osme more material, lol.

Thu 19th Jul, 2007
I like to paint portraits,the media I use soft pastel is well suited to portrait work, also as I draw/paint from photographs there are numerous good photo's of 'famous people' to use.I get a lot of satisfaction from drawing portraits when I get a good likeness, to get a likeness you need to be accurate with positioning of features unlike, landscape drawing where your features whatever they are trees hills flowers etc can be 5 - 10mm out of position to the photograph you are using but it will not affect the look of the picture, not the case with portraits!

Thu 19th Jul, 2007
you have all raised some really interesting issues here which I hadn't thought of before. The popularity thing is very true as is the use of 'artistic licence' when being able to draw landscapes for example, but not so much when drawing portraits. So is it easier to draw figures digitally? As some have mentioned that it's easier.. why is that?

Fri 20th Jul, 2007
I'd say its harder for me at least - I feel its a lot easier to rough out something on paper with a pencil, because at the scale we work here I can't be quite as precise even with my tablet, but thats probably because I'm more of a traditional artist anyway. Pencils and pens will always be my doodling tool of choice I think, lol - just that bit more fluid, digital is better for colouring though thanks to the undo tool and the pallette available.

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