But as if painting a picture so minutely that it’s almost impossible to tell apart from a photo isn’t hard enough, Jeong has added another level of difficulty for himself by choosing to give the hyperrealistic treatment to people who never had their picture taken, or some that we’re not even sure ever existed in the first place!
“I try to use as much reference as possible,” he explained his process in an interview to Star2.com. “Photographs are my major reference, but I also use live models and even drawings.”
In one particularly stunning case, Jeong created a magnificent portrait of the legendary Greek poet Homer. Not only are scholars not entirely certain that Homer was a real person, but his only surviving likenesses are statues. How could Jeong create such a lifelike painting out a largely featureless piece of stone?
“Since I could not rely solely on my imagination to come up with the lifelike image of the ancient poet, I found a model who had a similar facial feature with the bust of Homer,” he confided. “And then I combined the image of his real face with the face of the marble bust. The general facial structure was strictly based on the bust.”
The result speaks for itself, and luckily so, as we were left speechless!
