Photorealistic

Hurdler for Recharge

In 2007, the RW Knudsen company came out with a re-designed label for
their Recharge line of all-natural sports beverages.  I was  commissioned to
create 4 athletes in specific poses for the 4 different flavors.   The style they
needed was photo-realism, which is an area that I specialize in,  especially
when working digitally. Since I always work from models, I must find the appropriate model  for each job.  I rely on family, friends of family, and acquaintances to help  me find good models to work from.

A word about creating comps for finished art using photoshop:

The model for this pose was excellent and very cooperative.  Since the client had indicated a very specific pose for each figure to fit closely with their type layout, I had to ask him to position his arms, legs, and torso separately to match their "blueprint".  This is actually quite similar to the way Norman Rockwell worked.  For a running pose, his photographer would photograph one leg up while Norman would direct the model, sometimes supporting the leg himself.  Then they would photograph the other leg separately.  Rockwell would later piece together the pose he needed  from the parts.  In my case here, I believe that I used different photos for the arm, each leg, the torso and the head.   To try and photograph the model making this leap to match the sketch (while keeping the shot in focus) would have been an impossible task for me.  I think I took something  like 70 photos of this model to get the right parts for the pose.  The  pieces were cut and pieced together in photoshop. The only reason I know that this pose was humanly possible, was because I had researched many photos of hurdlers in action.  This model was actually a wrestler at a local high school where my son attended.  I had the help of my son's former wrestling coach to find this particular athlete. In  this case, the
ethnicity of the model had also been specified by the client (as it usually is).
I hope that I can continue to have good fortune in coming up with  quality models.