Analysis of The Morgan Freeman Finger Painting by Kyle Lambert

A Superficial Analysis of The Morgan Freeman Portrait
Allegedly ‘Finger Painted’ by Kyle Lambert with The Apple iPad App; ProCreate

A Short Introduction & Spoiler !

i have been tinkering this together for The Past Few Days, & every moment that i consider my participation in this, It fills me with painful befuddlement; Because it all seems so entirely pointless.

Even The Most superficial examination of this Claim that The Finger Painting of Morgan Freeman by Kyle Lambert was created with The iPad App ProCreate, Must Necessarily result in The Conclusion that it is Fraudulent !

This is InControvertibly a very Shallow Hoax; But The most curious part of this Fiasco is that there is so very little awareness or acknowledgment that it is A Hoax ! ( ! )

Such that The True Mystery behind this ( Is; Why or How are so many Media Whores & Television Personalities so Willingly Hoodwinked by this Ridiculous Declaration ( ? )
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i have claimed in previous Blog Rants that The Entire Interweb is a Hoax or at The Very Least, Presented to us as something very different from what it is. And The Thing which it more closely resembles is A Repository of Articles & Artifacts, Not from Nearly Billions of Correspondents; But Rather; By perhaps only a few Thousand.

It is further my belief that Very Few People; Less than 2% of The Population, Actually knows how to use a Computer. And Those that Do; Use their Computational Machine for The Basest Functions. The Most Recently Created Computers are Still so Frustrating to Use & become Productive with, That most purchased computers are abandoned with a few weeks or months & Never again used for anything.

The Two Most Salient ‘Proofs’ for this Crazy Idea is The Broad Range of ‘Shallow’ Reports on The Internet like this Kyle Lambert Hoax; And Secondly, Hand Made Signs. i still see in Private & Professional Venues, Hand Made Signs where one should reasonably expect one made with a Computer Printer. But We Don’t See The Clever Computer Made Signs because The Innumerable Owners of The Computers that make these Hand Made Signs, Don’t know how to use their Computer ! ( !!! )

Such that The Reason that there are so very few critical Examinations of this hoax, Is that there is a De Facto Conspiracy to Promote it, & There just aren’t enough Internet Users to Contradict this. ( ?

That may sound Impossible or Ridiculous itself, But What is The Alternative Solution ( ? )

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The Original Source Story :
The Original Story ( or Thereabouts ) from ABC News

The ‘Drawing’ took 200_hours, which works out to;
Very Roughly; 1.2 Pixels per second.

i mention this because The ‘Painting’ is a Virtual Duplicate of The Source Photograph, Precisely Matching The Pixelation of The Original in Many Places,

While curiously deviating from The Photographic Reproduction in others.

An Indirect ( ? ) Access to the Video

The Accompanying Video which purportedly shows The ‘Illustration’ being created makes it clear that The ‘Artwork’ was Created in a Very Non-Intuitive Manner that is Starkly Different from The Way that Other ‘Realist’, ‘SuperRealist’ or ‘PhotoRealist’ Painters Create their Paintings.

This Working Process by Kyle Lambert is Missing any Preliminary Sketches, Reference Grids, or UnderSketching. The Method seems to show that he simply began blobbing it in, Refining Each Level of Details as he Went, Adding more & more, Finer & Finer Painstaking Elements until he reached A Finished Work.

i am Not suggesting that this couldn’t be done, But there are many aspects to this ‘Illustration’, Considering that it was Said to have been done with a ‘Finger Painting’ Method, that arises Suspicions ( ! )

Again; i am perfectly willing to accept that many very skilled draftsmyn are able to create very detailed portraits or illustrations in a Digital Medium, But they are invariably Stylized when examined in detail. The Paintings of Chuck Close, James Rosenquist,  Mel Ramos, The Old Masters, Many Contemporary Super-Realists ( Which is ‘More’ Realistic than Photo-Realism ) as Well as Many Digital Artists; Are Clearly & Unmistakably Illustrations by An Artist’s Hand when even Superficially Examined on a Museum Wall or Enlarged on a Computer Screen.

This work ( ? ) by Kyle Lambert is very different. The Illustration has all The Qualities of The Source Photograph at all Levels of Examination. A Careful Comparison makes it clear that The Illustration is Merely A Photograph; Either The Source Photograph that has been slightly modified, or Entirely Different Photograph, Taken a Moment Later.

When i first glanced at it; The Precise Duplication of Very Fine Details in The Hairs made me immediately suspicious. There have been a lot of ‘Hoaxes’ on The Interweb lately & straightaway i surmised that this was one of them.

i would have been perfectly inclined to then dismiss any further interest in this;

Except that there has been an Enormous ( ? ) Volume of Web & Television Chatter that heralds this ‘Painting’ as ‘Real’ & Almost no Criticism that it may be a Fake ( ! ) & All of The WebSites that Do Suggest that it is Fake, Do so in A Feeble & Inconclusive Manner.

So i thought that i’d contribute my own smattering of horn honking on this topic.
There is One Other Very Odd Aspect to this Debate;

And that is; The Illustration, when Released, was Presented along side The Alleged Source Photograph;

But it’s been ( Observed or Suggested ) that when you Cross your Eyes while Viewing these Two Images; A 3D Rendering will Appear between them.

This Manner of 3D Viewing is Well Established & when you use this method on these two images, A 3D Rendering does Appear.

This Element of The Prank is A Significant Clue as to The Method of Where The Second ‘Painting’ came from ( ? )

 Click on the image to enlarge it ( them )

As you can See; The Level of Detail is ‘Remarkable’ !

But beyound that; The Method Used to Produce The Illustration was Allegedly performed on an Apple iPad with Finger Strokes.

And using his Method; Lambert has produced Not Only A Remarkable Likeness;
But gotten each Tiny Glistening Sweat Bead Precisely Right.

( ? )

He’s even duplicated The Precise Coloration of Blurs & Translucent Effects of Pixel Smearing. This may be expected, As with a Chuck Close Painting, But within these Swatches, There are Virtually No Artistic Variance at all.

This Level of Detail in The Weave of The Jacket requires an additional level of ones Suspension of Disbelief.

These Two Sets of Images show some Equivalencies & Divergences that are Explained in The Next Paragraph.

Concerning The Differences; My Initial Accounting of The Most Subtle Distortions appeared to be The Result of The Source Image being Enlarged or Reduced in which The Computer must ‘Re-Visualize’ The Source Material, Particularly when Reducing is Requested.

But this Doesn’t Explain some of The Bigger Disparities.

While Examining these Two Images i came across a remarkable Discovery !

The Reason that The Two Images are Different in some Remarkable Ways is That The Second ( Right ) Head of Morgan Freeman is Rotated 12± Degrees Counter Clockwise from The Image on The Left !

This explains The Differences, The 3D Effect & The Precisely Matching Details.

Presumably The Two Photographs were taken with a handheld Camera taking a burst of photographs without a Flash.

Was it Lambert’s thinking that if The Two Images; The Source Photograph & His ‘Illustration’ were ‘Obviously’ Different in many subtle & gross ways, He could claim that it is clearly Not simply a Duplication of the Source Photograph !

The Remaining Question is : Why were so many people successfully Hoaxed ?

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Before i decided that The ‘Illustration’ is merely a Second Photograph;

i was toying with An Idea that would more fully account for The Video, which was undoubtedly Created in a purely conventional manner on an iPad with An Illustration App— with only a very slight Sleight of Hand. A more thorough examination of The Process will no doubt yield more evidence that much of The ‘Painting’ is fraudulent in a Variety of way(s.

It’s been suggested that The Painting for The Video was Filmed or Shown ‘Backwards’, But i Initially had some Reservations of this Explanation; As Removing Fine Details is Actually Very Tedious & Has many of its own problems. But Then i watched an Analysis Video of The Original that was promoting this Method, & it began to seem more plausible, The Removal of Details in these Slowed Down & Enlarged Details, Seemed to Show Exactly what i would expect from this Technique. ? !

The Alternative Method that i was entertaining; Was that A Hand Written ( Hobby Project ) Computer Program simply took The Source Image & Reduced it down to a very coarse Pixelation, Then Inserted ‘Brush Strokes’ from Approximately 80% of The Surface’s Randomly Selected Points. This would Account for The Full Rendering, High Detail & Anomalous Differences.

This Process would continue again & Again, Each Layer drawn from a Finer Resolution, until it came to The Single Pixel Level, resulting in The Highest Reproduction of Details.

Gradation Sampling ( for Exposition )

The Program would begin with The First Image, Fawning Broad Strokes at First, Then with each Reduction in Pixelation, The Brush Strokes would become finer & Finer.

This Theory greatly appealed to me because it seems like a delightful way to automate a portraiture, & It appears to be exactly The way The Video shows The Illustration being made !