Brazilian-born artist Harding Meyer lives and works in Berlin and Karlsruhe where he paints these stunning, large-scale oil portraits. I imagine nothing short of standing in front of these giant canvases truly does them justice, but you can see them in extremely high resolution over on Meyer’s blog. His work will appear in a number of group shows later this year at Würth and the Arts and Museum Dr. Guislain in Gent, and you can see much more of his work at Galerie Voss.
Photographer Noah Kalina has been taking a self-portrait each day for the last 12.5 years as part of his aptly titled Everyday project. Six years ago a video chronicling six years of portraits set to music by Carly Commando took the internet by storm spawning legions of people to embark on similar self-portrait projects. This morning Kalina released an updated video containing some 4,500 photographs shot from January 11, 2000 through June 30, 2012. Here they are all at once.
Nope, not a photograph. This is an amazing portrait drawn by 29-year-old Portugal-based attorney Samuel Silva (he says art is just his “hobby”) based on a photograph by Russian photographer Kristina Tararina. Silva’s medium of choice is standard Bic ballpoint pens on paper and this particular portrait uses eight different colors, taking some 30 hours to complete. The drawing went gangbusters on Reddit last night and Silva fields a number of questions about his work over on deviantART. You can see many more of Silva’s drawings here.
In August of 2011 photographer Michael Shindler did something that to some might sound a little ludicrous. He had spent the last six years learning a cumbersome photographic process invented in the 1850s called Wet-Plate Collodion process that relies on metal plates to print photographs, and decided to use his unique skills to open the world’s only tintype portrait studio called Photobooth on Valencia street in San Francisco. In an age when even the use of regular film has taken the backseat to an exponential explosion of megapixels, Shindler was going to go seriously old school, opening a kind of commercial portrait studio that hadn’t been seen since the 1930s. To get some perspective this is like a musician announcing that their next album was coming out exclusively on phonograph. Here’s some more information on the process:
The Wet-Plate Collodion process, first introduced in 1851, involves coating an enameled metal or glass plate with a collodion mixture, which is then sensitized, exposed and processed all within a few minutes and while the plate is still wet. The resulting image (while technically a negative) is made up of extremely fine silver particles that are creamy-white in color, which allows the image to be viewed as a positive when seen against a black background.
So what happened in the 12 months since? Nearly 3,500 people have stepped into Shindler’s studio to sit for one of his truly wonderful portraits. Shindler recently posted some of his favorites online over on Behance and shared some more exclusively with Colossal for this post. Photobooth will be celebrating its one year anniversary on the 24th and you can stay tuned to their website for updates.
Update: As it turns out Shindler had a run-in with a famous dog last week. Photographer Theron Humphrey stopped in with his dog Maddie and she was quickly immortalized in the tintype portrait seen above. So awesome.
San Francisco photographer Thomas Hawk has a great collection of portraits taken during the 2012 Holi Festival of Colors (previously) at Spanish Fork, Utah earlier this year. No matter how many times I see photos and videos of this day, I never get tired of it. It’s simply the most joyous looking celebration I could imagine. (via devid sketchbook)
Fish Heads is a new series of fun portraits by L.A.-based photographer Tim Tadder. Though I’ve seen a number of different underwater portraiture projects, Tadder utilizes light and surface tension in an interesting way, making it seem as if the subjects are peering in from (or be swallowed by) a kind of spooky portal. You can see many more from the series over on Behance. All photos courtesy the artist. (via devid sketchbook)
I’ve been known to pocket the occasional sentimental wine cork, but that’s nothing compared to the thousands of used and recycled corks needed by Grand Rapids-based illustrator and artist Scott Gundersen to complete his large scale portraits. Starting with a large photograph that’s transferred to a drawing, Gundersen pins each cork to the canvas, creating a correlation between the hues of the wine-stained corks and the value of light or shadow in the portrait. His latest work, Trisha, took 3,621 corks to complete, but other works have required over 9,000. Watch the timelapse videos above to see how he does it. And can I add, what I wouldn’t give to have a completely idyllic barn studio. Such a beautiful space.
A number of newer laser etchings by Denver-based artist Jason Theilke, some of which are currently for sale over at Thinkspace Art Gallery and as prints on his website. You can also follow along via his blog. (previously)
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© 2010-2013 Christopher Jobson, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. I try my best to attribute images, videos, and quotes to their creators and original sources. If you see something on Colossal that's misattributed or you would like removed, please contact me. The Colossal logo and name Colossal are the trademarks of Christopher Jobson.
