Chris Buzelli - 100 Power Portraits

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100 Power Portraits

posted:November 13, 2012

I painted 100 portraits of the world's most powerful asset owners for aiCIO magazine. I took on this project initially because of the challenge. The challenge to improve my portrait skills, explore new color palettes and hopefully to find a gestural/loose direction. I worked directly from really poor references for most and had to find ways to fill in the details. At first I was making very detailed underdrawings but thought it took away from the freshness of the direct oil painting. Then after about 30 I felt like I was in trouble because of the deadline and the fact that there were 70 more to go. But the short deadline forced me to make decisions that I was not used to, forced me to experiment and work with my mistakes. After about the 99th portrait, I actually felt that my eye-hand coordination was on automatic drive and my brush was moving effortlessly. Here are 24 of the 100 portraits.