It all started with my portrait painting of Daniel Tosh in 2014. I took da Vinci's famous painting "Girl with an Ermine" and replaced her head with Daniel's. At the time I was exploring humor in regard to my work, but it was also the beginning of my research on using the Internet as a marketing tool. This cool artwork is still one of my fondest painting memories it was so much fun to paint, and I about crapped my pants when his writers found my progress picture on Twitter and shared it on his blog. That's when I learned the power of the hashtag.
After that, I have had a couple of clients request portraits done in the same head swap manner. We discussed options for an old painting to base it off of, and from there I had them take photos of their heads in similar positions. I used PhotoShop to do the face swap so I had a complete reference to use from the start. The lighting was different even after some tweaking on the computer so it took a bit of effort to get the tones and values to match the original oil painting and make sense. I also added a bit more of my own flair using color and added contrast. Overall I am decently pleased with my products, and I had very happy and amused clients.
More info: christiesnelson.com
