Canvas

Narrative function

Portraits that should feel made by hand, credits, a memory: you still compose a shot of a person, then the stock becomes paint. The camera is usually a portrait distance, locked, so stroke direction can be read.

If you cannot see a stroke, it is a grade, not canvas. It is the wrong tool when you wanted unfinished line, optical dabs, or wet process.

Those are sketch, Monet muse, and hand-paint. A luxury ad may want magazine instead.

How it works

50mm to 85mm, eye height, lock-off. North window or a large soft source, painter's studio logic.

Ask for visible bristle, canvas tooth, thicker paint in the lights, photographic structure underneath. Prompt: Canvas treatment of [Subject], visible brush, oil tooth, a painting that still has a face.

When to use it

A handmade portrait, a credit still, a memory that should feel painted and finished. Do not use it as a smooth painterly filter with no tooth.

Compared with similar shots

Monet Muse is broken color mixed in the eye, light as the subject. Sketch stops before the paint.

Hand Paint shows the wet act. Akrill is plastic poster pigment sitting on top.

Canvas is finished oil as the stock.

• Monet MuseLight is the subject.
• SketchStop before the paint.
• AgamemnonMake them ancient and doomed.

In film

Loving Vincent treats oil as the entire image stock while faces still look. The Mill and the Cross restages painted space as a living crowd.

Paint is matter, not varnish.

Prompt it

Keep the portrait structure, then the oil. Canvas treatment of [Subject], visible brush, oil tooth, a painting that still has a face.

Add 85mm lock-off, window key, bristle direction, eyes sharp. No smooth plastic painterly.

Canvas treatment of [Subject], visible brush, oil tooth, a painting that still has a face.

What usually goes wrong

Smooth plastic painterly with no tooth, or a mash with Sketch line. The tell is no stroke.

Fix it: bristle, canvas weave, thicker paint in the lights, a face that still looks.

Questions