So real you won’t believe their paintings: Artist creates incredible, life-like portraits

 

A talented artist has created such incredibly realistic paintings it's ART to believe they aren't really photographs.

 

Scottish oil painter Claire Duguid, 32, spends anything up to three months at a time on each portrait - painstakingly capturing every tiny detail of the subject's face and appearance.

 

More story and paintings after the cut.

 

 

At a quick glance it's hard to spot a single brush stroke but Claire says she stops just short of hyper-realism ensuring that her work still raises eyebrows but continues to look like a painting.

 

Depending on the demands of her clients and the intricacy of the painting each piece can command up to £6,000 - and they can be found on walls worldwide from the UK to Hong Kong and New York.

 

Claire, who lives in Edinburgh, said: "In some respects I am painting every individual hair but I call myself a photorealist painter.

 

"I associate hyper-realists in figurative painting with minute detail down to each individual pore on a face like the work of Chuck Close - maybe I'm a bit of both.

 

 

"But I use light to distort and erode the figure, giving the light a sense of form and the figure less definition, creating an equality between the elements.

 

"The first artist that captured my heart was Renoir - there's something in the way he paints the eyes, a life he captures.

 

 

Eyes I feel are the most important feature in a portrait painting. In my work they are the point at which I start and finish a painting."

 

Since graduating Claire has been selected by the Royal Society of Arts to exhibit her work at an exclusive show at the Atrium Gallery of Whiteley in London.

 

She was also part of a small selection of Scottish artists to promote BraveArt - a promotional event showcasing the best of Scottish art.

 

Last year her work was exhibited with Union Gallery during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world's largest arts festival.