When artist Kyle Lambert uploaded a video of his finger-painted portrait of actor Morgan Freeman to YouTube, he boldly captioned it “The world’s most realistic finger painting.” At first, this statement seems rather hyperbolic and somewhat cocky. Once the video starts rolling, it’s clear Lambert’s confidence is definitely earned. His rendering of a photorealistic portrait of Freeman was accomplished “using only a finger, an iPad Air, and the app Procreate.”
Lambert, a UK-based visual artist, was drawn to iPad art after watching Apple demo the Brushes app at the iPad announcement event in 2010. “Within a few hours of experimenting I knew that it would be possible to create good quality paintings similar to that I had been creating in Adobe Photoshop,” wrote Kyle on his website. To test this new medium, he attempted a finger-painted portrait of Beyoncé. Using only his finger and the Brushes app, Lambert recreated the cover of Beyoncé’s album I Am…Sasha Fierce, which he completed in only eight hours.
The portrait of Beyoncé might not have the photorealism of his Morgan Freeman masterpiece, but it sure does come damn close to it. On the video’s first day on YouTube, it received 200,000 views. Lambert has been commissioned to paint 10 more celebrity portraits on his iPad, which were featured in The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, and The Metro.
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Thankfully, Lambert has not restricted his artistic endeavours to iPads. He’s created “visually striking paintings and illustrations” for companies like Apple, Adobe, BBC Television, GQ, and Paramount, to name a few. In 2011, Lambert was a featured artist at the Macworld Expo. Odds are you’ve come across his work elsewhere, as his artwork was featured in the announcements of Adobe’s Touch App, Apple’s iCloud, and iPad 2.
Now, Morgan Freeman is immortalized.
