A Knowledge Based Approach to Modeling Portrait Painting Methodology

Traditional portrait artists use a specific but open human vision methodology to create a painterly portrait of a live or photographed sitter. Portrait artists attempt to simplify, compose and leave out what’s irrelevant, emphasizing what’s important. While seemingly a qualitative pursuit, artists use known but open techniques such as relying on source tone over colour to indirect into a colour temperature model, using "sharpness" to create a centre of interest, using edges to move the viewers gaze, and other techniques to filter and emphasize. Our interdisciplinary work attempts to compile and incorporate this portrait painter knowledge into a multi-space parameterized system that can create an array of painterly rendering output.