Duchess Of Cambridge - First Official Portrait

[sp1814]

What are your thoughts?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/11/duchess-of-cambridge-portrait

Personally, I think it makes a really beautiful 31 year old woman look like fairly attractive 43 year old woman...

[LeMarchand]

Awful. Orf with his head!

[joko]

although the artist cleraly has skill with painting, he has failed to capture her likeness properly.

i do portraits myself and i know only too how being even a coiple of milimetres out on something can completely alter the persons face making them look like another person - such as a close relative.

she does indeed look much older and looks like she is stifling a laugh ... i cannot understand why he has made her face and neck so wide and why he has done so many lines around her mouth and cheeks.

mind you it can often depend on the process used for creating the image - if he did it as a life drawing in a series of sittings, then its harder to get right and see where the mistakes are, as she is not always there and he cannot keep checking to see where you need to work on ... but if he worked from a photograph or a few photos then theres no excuse for getting her face so out of proportion.

its a shame as it could have been a nice image.

[jno]

it doesn't make her look like a glamour model, which is probably no bad thing. The eyes and the mouth seem right. But she clearly hasn't tarted herself up as she would for opening a supermarket.

The William and Harry portrait looks okay on a screen or on paper but basically looks like a magazine illustration when you see it for real. No depth.

[DTCwordfan]

can we see your work, joko?.....some of mine is buried in Arts.

[jomifl]

Agree 100% sp.

[jno]

ok, well, just been chatting with someone who has seen the portrait live and says it's nothing like the reproduction the newspapers have been given (ie the one in the link); the colours are all wrong (the dress for instance should be green) and the original is much better.

[balliali]

Frumpy, not flattering.... don't like it at all. Don't know what all the hype is about. It's even worse than a bad photo, she's stuck with it and the world and it's mother has seen it.

[knowabit]

Her face looks puffy....

[Rosie29]

It shows the perils of working mainly from photographs - the portrait , to me , has a curiously "dead" quality about it.

[keyplus90]

I think she looks like someone who is in mid 60s but had a facelift to look younger.

[andy-hughes]

As opined in the Mail - it makes her look 'totally Royal' - bored stiff, twenty years older than she actually is - and about two stone heavier!

[anotheoldgit]

andy-hughes

Welcome back Andy, I trust that you are well, and you had a lovely Christmas?

Happy New Year to you and yours.

[andy-hughes]

Thankyou AOG, how very kind.

I had a wonderful time thank you, and refreshed and a little colder (I have been in the Carribean for two weeks!) but I have missed everyone on here.

A hearty welcome home to your good self, and i trust both you and Mrs Git enjoyed your country hotel stay, and you are ready for some more robust debate in 2013.