Bringing history to life ??

[Runmonty]

I saw something recently that has prompted me to explore colourisng statues. Here is a very quick first attempt. The colours are not really matching, but this was more a proof of concept for me.

[Marko]

Might be interesting and good start - need to see a 2-3 of them though.

[Mad Aussie]

From an art point of view I can see the appeal in this. The fact it's not a real representation of the subject tends to take it away from 'photo' and well towards 'image' in my mind.

[Runmonty]

Thanks for the comments guys. MA I agree it certainly isnt intended to be a true representation of the scene.

The thing that struck me when I first saw this was approach (I cant recall where and didn't save the link) was my extra appreciation of the subject of the sculpture. I often walk past statues and only give them a cursory glance, if I look at them at all. By colourising them I felt that I had a better appreciation of the person represented, and I must confess the act of Photoshopping gave me a better appreciation of the detail of the sculpture that I would ordinarily not appreciate.

[Jim Scrimger]

I never thought of that - rather like it.

[QuietOne]

Didn't the Romans paint their statues? Or was it the Greeks? Anyway, if they can, why not?

[asnow]

I really like this concept. Excellent job for the first attempt.

[Runmonty]

Thank you all. I have tried a couple more since and have now come realise it is very important to have a full tonal range. It is hard to shoot marble statues with enough tonal range to make it look realistic. Maybe I will try some image blending

[Iguanasan]

Like I said on Flickr, I think this is really cool. I envy anyone who can do photo editing work like that. If I tried, it would be like a bad paint by numbers and look like crap. I still say well done and you'll get better the more you do.

[Runmonty]

Like I said on Flickr, I think this is really cool. I envy anyone who can do photo editing work like that. If I tried, it would be like a bad paint by numbers and look like crap. I still say well done and you'll get better the more you do.

Thanks mate, but you give me too much credit. It is just like painting by numbers and then selecting the right the layer blend mode. It is much simpler than it appears