Artists in Phuket

Most of you will know that after Rachel graduated from Goldsmiths we commissioned a portrait of her by two of her classmates, who work together. This portrait was made possible thanks to a generous gift from Brookside, and we are collecting it at Easter, when Phil and Khloe come to visit his parents in Hungerford.

So that leaves the other two to have painted and immortalised. Sarah has been very busy with planning a wedding and it isn't her highest priority, and David is also a little busy at film school.

Well that leaves portrait artists who work from photographs, and the best of these may well be found in China and Asia. There are several on the road to the beach from where we are staying on Phuket. Most do typical Thai gold and textured paintings as well as pop art, like this:

After walking up and down the road a bit and getting prices from each, I decided to choose on the basis of quality rather than price, since even the most expensive is much less than the price to be paid for commissioned art in England.

I chose this guy, Mui, who works with his friend and curator Mr Lu. Yes he had just painted the young Buddhist monk in a yellow robe as a commission for a customer, in four days.

As you may be able to see, he is working on the portrait of David we have chosen from one of the photos of him taken on a film shoot, working with an Arri allexa camera. The reason he is working on only part of the canvas is that we wanted it in inches rather than cm, as it is easy to get stretcher bars for a gallery wrap in inches online in England. They sell the paintings taken off the frame and the canvas rolled into a tube for easy transport for posting overseas. As they don't apply the paint too thick, it dries very quickly so the rolled canvas does not shed wet oil paint.

As you can see, they print out the image on photographic paper, and not that large. Maybe 10cm x 6cm. They project the initial image onto the canvas from an old overhead projector, using a black and white image they get by photcopying the colour photo onto an acetate OHP transparency, a very inexpensive method of getting the proportions correct. 

But the real skill is getting the colour tones and values right, which is incredibly difficult when working onto a white surface and without constant checking the colours against the photo.

In about half an hour of watching we slowly saw some of David's likeness emerge!

Mui typically paints a portrait in 3 days, the first day is spent getting the photo printed and the canvas prepared with an outline. The second day he paints the mid tones without blending. The third day he blends the mid tones and adds highlights and deep shadows, bringing out the detail.

We shall have to wait to see the finished portrait; we have moved now

Here is another of Mui's portraits, from his buddhist monk series, it is enormous, about 2m wide. The colours appear luminous. Mui has been painting for about 15 years, and spent five of these years at art school. Lu also spent about five years at art school, but seemed to have more of a curator manager's role, and negotiated passionately on price, defending the fact that they were (a little bit) more expensive than some of their competitors on the road (whose quality was not quite as good).

We have now moved onto the southern tip of the island at Chalong beach, so we will have to wait a bit to see and collect the portrait. 

Chalong is quieter, and without the constant hum of Patong tourist attractions. It is close to some of the southern islands off the coast, so it is cheaper to explore by boat, and quicker to get to them. The hotels are also cheaper than Patong, and more families with children here - all speaking Russian I think. Not many English voices.

I'll post something about the Fantasea experience next blog, a kind of Las Vegas meets Asia show. Fascinating and a good night out.