Wow! and Wow! some of that work is just mind bending. How many hours work do you think would be involved to produce such great work?

These are really amazing and astounding what they can do now with digital art. The two of Johnny Depp are really great especially the one of him in real life though the Capt. Jack is really good as well. I agree that they look so realistic that it seems to somewhat defeat the fact that they are drawn.

GO HUGHIE XD!!!!!

Wow these are great, some of them you can hardly tell they aren’t photos. Carlzon Portrait is my favorite, thats just awesome!

these are gorgeous. I think it’s funny how originally painters always made an attempt to make a painting look like a photo and now in the digital age, graphic designers are making photos look like paintings.

Some do have videos or in process pictures linked from the deviantART page.

Brendan,
My mistake. You’re right and thanks for pointing it out. When I get a chance I’ll go through and update the list.

very good paintings….. cool.

Great selection. Some I still know from deviantart.

Very entertaining post! Thank you.

Wow, Lovely works !!
I was just confused watching some of em, i thought they were real photographs.. Really, WOW!!

GREAT portraits.

I got here through stumbling from other sites, any idea which software were used in the creation of such amazing portraits??

just Phenomenal!

I think this are the best portraits i ever seen in my life. I don’t care if it was photoshopped or handmade.

Mattress,
Most were done in Photoshop. If you click through, many of them provide the details.

Nicholaspaul,
I agree that very few clients are going to pay a premium for a creation that looks very much like a photograph, but personally I still appreciate the quality of the work and I find them to be inspiring.

I cannot help but wonder at the bitterness and cynicism of many of the comments regarding these images. Whilst they are neither portraits, photographs or paintings in the strictest sense, they are objects, and have been created by an artist; so their individual quality (and collective merit as a contemporary style/genre) is surely what is important. You either like them or you dont, but the same could be said of a Rodin sculpture (realistic?)or any of the 20th century movements in realism. For over a hundred years we have been bombarded with realism, and as technology improves, our sense of realism is heightened (HD TV being a great case in point).Their technicality is something of a distraction, as is the familiarity of the faces, but more distracting still is the need that many of the viewers seem to find in comparing them with another method of representation. We live in a time of familiar faces, and faces made familiar by film, media and photographs, so surely, these pieces are an accurate representation of the ‘face focused’ world we live in. so, again, you either like them or you dont, and if you don’t just get over yourselves!

lovely stuff man!!!
just to inform you that the “Portrait of a Mad Man” is of Late Heath Ledger as a joker in the Movie “Dark Knight”

Great skill shown here, nice post

There’s certainly skill and talent involved when someone makes such paintings or renders or illustrations. But the point often eludes me. Unless it’s animated 3D character or the pic is needed in respectively huge size. Otherways i’d say it’s kinda dull. Why waste talent and skill to such things. These talented artists should also think up an idea for their paintings to really stand out.

I love digital portraits! These were really, really well done. Thanks for compiling such an awesome list.

Wow, incredible paintings!

Truly inspirational! The life in the eyes is amazing!

Anyone else think Jack Sparrow looks like Federrer?

wow this is awesome…thanks for sharing this..thumbs up!

At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important

I love these! I’ve always loved digital art, it’s so cool!

Joni,
They’re not embedded. I took screen prints, uploaded them to my server and placed them in the post. Hope that answers your question.

I take it back–the Kurt Cobain portrait says something about him, but that’s due to the photographer’s work, not the copyist’s.

What can I say, Inspiring , Great , Unbelievable ,
Truly Magnificent.

Wow! I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but as a full-time portrait artist, both digitally and traditionally, these digital “paintings” are not all that difficult. Both traditional portraits and digital portraits typically start with a photograph. The difference is, a traditionally painted portrait is started from a blank canvas with the photo only used as a reference.

A digitally “painted” portrait actually starts with the photo, and digitally manipulates the photo to look like a painting. The software I use is Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. The trick is to get the photograph to appear like a hand painted painting and not so much as a photograph. This is actually very hard to do, because most digital artists lean more toward the realism of a photograph rather than the creative interpretation of a traditionally painted portrait. This is why so many of these “paintings” look like a photograph.

If you would like to watch a couple videos of a traditionally painted portrait, check out these links. I do not know this artist, but he is amazing!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqee4_ANPgA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a__n22dp2k&feature=related

very impressive. look closer, every single detail is perfectly draw by painter, maybe took lots of time to make it. thanks for great posting.

Wow, great and impressive.

Excellent selection. I can’t imagine how much work has gone into some of those.

very amazing pics

@ Dave: If u click on any of the above photo it will give u a link for youtube where u can watch the artist draw and paint these photos from scratch…

considering that, its a pretty neat job!

princess: . . . Yes, there are some very talented digital painters, but you are mistaken if you think ALL of the above “paintings” were done “from scratch”. I didn’t mean to lessen the impact of the digital art, it is just that most people don’t know that these were started with cloning the original photograph and then manipulating it to look like a painting.

As I said, I do both digital and traditional portraits. I offer digital portraits for people who do not have the money for a traditionally painted portrait which cost thousands instead of the few hundred dollars digital portraits cost. I also know how to paint a portrait digitally, record it to show on UTube, and it looks like it was done from scratch, but it wasn’t, it is nothing more than photo manipulation. Sorry. I guess I’m just more honest than most.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa5JoiC0p68

I have only a basic knowledge of Photoshop and Corel Painter. There are many others with much more training or understanding of these programs that do much more than I am able to do and much better too. But I believe anyone with a basic understanding of graphic applications can do this. (and the money to invest in the proper hardware and software.)

I also believe the artists that create this type of work, completely enjoy the minutes or hours it takes to make these creations. Yes, digital painting is much easier than starting out with a blank canvas and using artist’s oil paints, but it is none the less enjoyable and creative. I get so lost in the process, time just flies by and when I think only a half an hour has passed, three or four hours have actually gone by! I love it.

Hi again Dave, I watched your video, really inspired am i right in thinking that all you used where paint brushes and the blur tool? I never thought it would be so easy. All the effect of an oil painting with out the mess or the need to wait for paint to dry. Im going to have a go myself.

Wow.. these are so… ordinary.

fantastic grafics!!!!!!!

Hi,
That was awesome………
Is it possible 2 get our photograph done somewhere?

Husna,
You could contact some of the artists to see about getting a portrait done.

Some really nice pics there, not all to my taste, but i can still recognize a certain amount of skill when i see it.

Amazing!! Absolutely Stunning..

very well done,,

Wow!! My favorite is the Jimi Hendrix portrait.

Ohh Yeah baby!! haha

I´m from são Paulo, Brazil. I´m soo impressed with that illustrations, I hope one day join this list of illustrators. At least I’m studying for it!

I don’t understand how many people with bad taste are in this world. these to me are terrible tacky and ugly portraits, anyone with some real artistic knowledge will agree with me. aghh!

Hey all,
I dont mean to burst any bubbles here but this kind of stuff was done during art classes at CMU and even then if this was done it would have been stopped by the instructors.
These are photography copies….copying a photo…even copying it and cropping it is just “draftsmanship” it has very little to do with art especially fine art!
Designing a human is not that difficult…if you are trained in anatomy and a few years of figure study.
What is difficult is creating a composition. drawing something relistically is NOT art it is draftsmanship….Please…dont get them confused!

In an age where so many disturbing things are going on…..people killing people…visual images of children suffering plastered all over the place…mass ignorance has for some reason become “the norm.” Why is it that we can not look at something beautiful or other wise, without someone mouthing off about how much it sucks or what little talent it takes to create it? Does taking a picture with a camera make you an “artist?” If this is the case, then over 4.6 billion people every year become “artists” in North America. It’s, “how” you take a picture that makes you an artist. It’s how you paint a picture that makes you an artist, it’s how you play a role that makes you an artist. Anyone can paint, take pictures and even act, it’s when others are taken back and impressed, that’s when you become an artist. In the comments posted here, for every two negative there are twenty positive. People are impressed, keep your chin up and soldier on!!!! To those that would rather undermind the artistic creativity of these works of art, I was always told, that if you dont have anything good to say about someone, then STFU!!!!

Liv Tyler the best. Nice girl!

Brilliant portraits!! This is absolutely an incredible talent, Simply superb.

These aren’t impressive at all – most, if not all of these images, are smudged photographs.

digital painting is a very attractive path for artists, but i refuse to stoop to the level where u just trace from an image. some of them cant even do it well. this is very very sad. great artists like michelangelo and monet would heave a sigh of pity at the state to which art has fallen.

Well, these are good. bt I wish I could upload my digital painting here. they were exhibited in My university as well.
bt thse are OK…

To all those people saying this is not real art… stfu

this is real art, and takes talent and skill, unlike those cheap crappy splatters of paint on a canvas that people call ‘art’ that a child could paint.

Really amazing portraits. Most of them look like a photograph

eh…. they’re ok looking

hey m dying to c ur all DPs.its amazng boss………..

These are not really ‘art’ because there is not interpretation of the subject matter, there is nothing apart from a mechanical (sometimes awful) copy of a photographic image. That is not art, if anything it is closer to ‘illustration’, but I wouldn’t even insult illustrators by calling them that either. You fanboys and girls may whoop over how great these are but it shows a high degree of visual illiteracy to try to defend these as ‘art’. There is some skill required to copy a photograph its true but these could just as easily be traced over in Photoshop and that shows no craftsmanship or artistry and they are all quite soulless as far a I can see. Major yawn, there is much better digital painting going out there that is original and exciting.

whose carlo? . .does anybody knows him? . .

Thanx for reminding everyone that digital PAINTINGs can be made HONESTLY!!

I am a digital painter and professional photographer with dyspraxia. My condition makes it almost impossible to create paintings and drawings from scratch but by combining my knowledge of photography and my perseverance in photoshop, I am able to create works of art that I would struggle to make without digital tools and the ability to backtrack and re-do things I get wrong. The amount of time and effort that goes into creating these works of art is commendable and the skill of the artists should not be underestimated. anyone who doubts the skill involved should create a better image themselves first!

This is ART!!
my favorite is mr. john lennon.

greetings from bremen.