Adam Driver #103 A-D (Sharp Magazine, Winter 2018)
Adam, long hair shining under a stark light revealing the dramatic depth of the set of his eyes, hollows under the wide wings of his cheekbones, prominence of his nose, and fullness of his bearded mouth.
This is why I love strong lighting on strong features.
Not many photographers have been bold enough to light him this way, but putting Adam under a strongly directional light reveals contours that are usually only hinted at in a traditional portrait with it’s diffuse lighting and flat to frame pose, or a red carpet photo with the light source directly in front of him. What’s remarkable is just how dramatic those contours are, even when he’s nearly expressionless. His eyes are entirely shaded by his brow unless he tips his head up and to one side, and the shadow cast by his nose extends to his throat, even with his head tipped back. Meanwhile, the contours of his cheekbones make him seem positively cadaverous when he tips his chin down a touch, and his mouth and jaw are entirely shadowed by his upper face.
This was mid-2015, when Adam was on the rebound from the trials of filming “Silence.” Based on the fullness of his face and the length of his hair, I’d guess perhaps it was late spring or early summer; by fall he’d cut his hair short for “Paterson” and had lost the roundness of cheek that he’d had while filming s5 of “Girls.” Other photos from this same shoot have him sharing a sweet cherub-cheeked smile, but the angle and intensity of the lighting in these reveal the bones beneath.
I chose to essentially eliminate shading, simplifying the forms down to stark black and white, and I also left out most of the details I’d usually put in, with the exception of his most prominent moles. Adam just isn’t Adam without his moles. It’s interesting to see the patterns they make, how some catch the light in some poses and are hidden or washed out in others. But even as simple as these are, each feels so different from the other because of the gestures he’s making with the angles of his head and eyes. I would love to get to paint him lit like this when he’s emoting; just imagine all the furrows, rumples, and dimples. Photos used for reference were outtakes from a 2015 Esquire UK photoshoot, taken by Simon Emmett in 2015, and used in an article in the 2018 winter edition of Sharp magazine.
About 8 hours of painting time for all of them together; one of them only took about 90 min, another about 2.5 hrs, and the others were about 2 hours each.
