“Wiley sketches...”
Yeah, sure he does, just enough for the client to think they are getting their money’s worth. But then those sketches go in a drawer somewhere and whoever does the painting uses a projector and a photo or two.
Old masters used apprentices too, so this is not a new thing. But old masters worked with their apprentices, this guy just sends in an order and has probably never met any of the people who do the work or swapped paintbrushes with them or shared the same palette... just sent in the order.
The leaves are repetitive, like wallpaper, not a sketch, and not artistic. You can see the same leaf with the same arrangement of 5 leaflets over and over, the lighting on them does not change to fit the position the leaves are in though they vary slightly as if tole painted...it may as well have been stenciled. The lighting for the leafy background is not from the same source as the lighting on the figure, so there’s nothing to connect the background from foreground stylistically, which pretty much screams that there was more than one artist even if he didn’t admit it. The only connection between foreground and background are a few leaves added to overlap the figure so the figure looks a little less like it was just slapped on top, which it was. There’s no hint of light reflected from what is lit up onto nearby surfaces- that would have eliminated the pasted on look.
Maybe once he has it drawn out he sends it to China and they fill it in like paint-by-numbers. Or he just sends a digital file which would be the most economical.
He could probably buy painted panels from China and then superimpose the figure on top, but most likely he just has them do it all.
Good post.
Didn’t Thomas Kincaid (Painter of Light) do something similar? Have mass-produced paintings that he’d dab a few finishing touches on?