Oil Painting Parodies: Swapping heads using old paintings

It all started with my portrait of Daniel Tosh in 2014. I took da Vinci's classic "Girl with an Ermine" and replaced her head with Daniel's. At the time I was exploring humor in regards to my work, but it was also the beginning of my research on using the Internet as a marketing tool. Painting this is still one of my fondest painting memories it was so much fun to paint, and I about crapped my pants when his writers found my progress picture on Twitter and shared it on his blog. That's when I learned the power of the hashtag.

16x20 oil on canvas

Here's a nice side-by-side for you.

I still don't know if her ever saw it himself!

After that, I have had a couple of clients request portraits done in the same manner. We discussed options for the historical piece to base it off of, and from there I had them take photos of their heads in similar positions. I used PhotoShop to swap the heads so I had a complete reference to use from the start. The lighting was different even after some tweaking in PS so it took a bit of effort to get the tones and values to match and make sense. Overall I am decently pleased with my products, and I had very happy and amused clients :)

This one was commissioned in 2015. I added a bit more of my own flair using color.

24x30 oil on canvas

And here is the original painting:

Then another client had me paint this van Eyck for her husband for Christmas last year:

24x30 oil on canvas

Here's a side-by-side for this one:

I love a good challenge!! Which one is your favorite this time?

Thanks for looking!