How Hard To Do ? (Rendering My Portrait as Arcimboldo's "Gardiner")

Cafe Society
1

I wold like to se photoshop to produce a portrait of myself as Arcimboldo’s “Gardiner” (link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/05/AR2011010502282.html).
Is this something that would be easy to do? Or is it something that could only be done by a graphic artist?

2

I’d say it’d be fairly difficult if you’re not already an artist . . . and even if you are one. You have to find fruits/veggies that match your particular features, and give them all the appropriate light source/shadows, and equivalent color saturation, etc.

I’m thinking of doing one myself, if I ever have the time.

I once saw one made entirely of penises and testicles. Most impressive.

3

I’d rate that project as damn difficult. If doing it for a client that demanded impeccable quality, I’d probably quote 3 or 4 thousand. There are a lot of challenges there:
–Gathering the fruits and vegetables, either as stock photos or items to photograph.
–Shading the assembled vegetables so the lighting is believable.
–Making it look like the person.

It’s tough enough to do a convincing portrait of a person, without trying to do it with big, colored, distinctively shaped lumps.

I’d be surprised if Arcimboldo’s portraits were designed to look like specific people, and succeeded in doing so. (Surprised, but not shocked.)

4

Ralph124c: If you wanted to try it yourself, here’s how I’d proceed.

  1. Choose the picture of yourself. If it’s not already a big image (maybe 4000 pixels from chin to crown), then resample it in Photoshop. Work as large as your computer can comfortably handle. The image quality isn’t paramount since you’ll be replacing it with vegetables.

  2. Spend some money to download images from a stock photo house. Check out the various deals for things like month-long subscriptions. Choose photos that are evenly lit. You’ll be adding the shadows and highlights in Photoshop, taking your cues from the shading in the portrait.

  3. Start overlaying the parts of your face one-by-one. Maybe a watermelon for your forehead. Pomegranates for eyes. Try to maintain the resemblance as each piece is placed and shaded, that way if the task is too hard you’ll know early in the game.