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    Artist behind 'dreadful' Kate Middleton Tatler portrait breaks silence with defiant response
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    Artist behind ‘dreadful’ Kate Middleton Tatler portrait breaks silence with defiant response

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    19 Comments

    1. WynterRayne on

      I don’t see anything dreadful about it. I know I can’t paint anywhere *near* as good as that.

    2. _Monsterguy_ on

      It really is incredibly poor and makes you question how this person can be a professional artist (which they seem to be?).

      There’s a near infinite number of artists on Fiver that’d do a better job for about forty quid.

    3. Squire-1984 on

      I’ve got it, it’s that bird from this morning! With a bit of Stephen segal thrown in.

    4. Bean-Penis on

      What’s wrong with the painting? It doesn’t look to me as if it’s meant to be perfectly accurate, doesn’t seem like that’s the art style of the piece. I’m not clicking on a Mirror link but does it say it’s meant to be a realistic portrait?

    5. MarleyEmpireWasRight on

      Idk what’s happening but I think it looks nice. Very stylised, sure, but if I wanted photorealism I’d want a fucking photo.

    6. DM_me_goth_tiddies on

      I was ready to go to bat to defend this portrait and say that it’s absolutely fucking hilarious how for over 100 years right wing rags have hated any form of Impressionism. Some thing don’t change. 

      But then I read the quote

      > Kate did not sit for the portrait and Uzor researched photos of her to inform her work, saying she had found more than 189,000 images of Kate in a picture archive. 

      And be real. You did not look at 189,000 images of Kate. You did not need that archive, you could have just Googled her. It’s embarrassing to say that. Just get one and say she didn’t sit and she painted from reference. 

    7. pigeon-incident on

      Good art ≠ realistic renderings of things exactly as they are in real life. Whether you like the style or not is one thing, but not every artist is trying to create something unmistakable and true to life, so commenting only on that misses the point.

    10. pringellover9553 on

      I honestly feel like I could do as good a job. Like seriously. I know a lot of people say that but before I decided to pack in education I was going to study art at university and oil portraits were my thing. I genuinely feel like I could do a good a job as this

      In particular I think it just is flat, there is hardly any tone or dimension to the painting. The colours in the skin are muddied and there is zero depth. The forehead is essentially one block of colour, there’s just *nothing* about it. Personally I prefer much more dramatic colouring.

      It also feels like it’s trying to be realism, but fails at doing so.

    11. pm_me_your_amphibian on

      I dunno, I think it’s nice. Stylised, sure, but it’s not terrible at all.

    14. KuriousKttyn on

      I mean….. that one is shit but compared to the one of the king? At least they don’t need to call the ghostbusters for kates picture 😂

    15. eggIy on

      I’m shocked at how many people in this thread are saying that it doesn’t matter that the portrait doesn’t look like Kate because it’s the style the artist wanted..

      Style doesn’t have to mean photo realism, but style absolutely should be able to represent subject matter in a way that is recognisable, and this just isn’t..

    17. BigBeanMarketing on

      When you see how bad modern paintings can be, really makes me wonder how dreadfully inaccurate every painting of royalty in the medieval era must have been. God knows what they really looked like.

    18. Efficient_Steak_7568 on

      I feel like if the right side of her face/right ear wasn’t blurry then it would be much better

      Did the editor of Tatler spill her coffee on the only draft? 

    19. Left-Lingonberry4073 on

      This is a joke, right?
      I have a degree in Fine Art so I can hold some weight and that is genuinely fucking awful for someone that’s a ‘professional’.
      I got bones to pick with that right hand for starters, but even proportionally that left arm looks broken!
      The length from Kate’s midriff to her hips is so comically short that it looks like she has giraffe legs.

      Her melting left ear and the fabric is just streaks of nothing.
      Granted Fabric is difficult to do but that doesn’t look like clothing, it has no semblance of flow, ripple or detail. The bottom just looks like rags.
      Which angle does the light hit Kate? Fuck knows! Hannah fucking doesn’t but it ain’t where it should be.

      The skin colour palette is so muddy and washed and that face… Jesus. Who’s tonal contrast? Ain’t heard of her.
      No exaggeration when I say that I know A-level students can and would do better.
      It’s a horror story the deeper you look at it.