2 Behind Portrait - Fav Photos 2024

Behind the Scenes 2 - the Royal Portrait

Sharing behind the scenes from the King's royal portraits.

An Anniversary Portrait

I saw a painting online of King Theodan in LOTR like he was standing for a portrait with his horse.
It was called King of the Golden Hall, by Magdalena Katanska...

I wanted to try and recreate something similar with Lawrence and his horse to mark the tenth anniversary of his reign. I also planned on including the artist, working on painting the portrait.

Horse Armour

The first thing I would need, was to make armour for the King's horse. He would need a 'blanket' with chainmail, and some protective armour for his head. I made a test blanket out of some white cotton (an old bedsheet) to check for fit before cutting into the good fabric. And I wrapped his head and neck with plastic wrap...

With the blanket sewn, and chainmail sewn on, it was time to address the head armour. I would be making it out of Aves Apoxie, and in order to protect the horse's head from scratches, I first drew up a pattern for the armour, then cut it out of felt, which I positioned on the horse, and covered with another layer of plastic wrap. That way there would be space under the armour to glue the felt.

With the armour sculpted, and painted, I glued the felt underneath and tried it on the horse...

Taking a closer look at the finished armour after adding the leather straps..

the Painting

So, after making armour for his horse, and adding a fur edge to the bottom of his royal robe, I took lots of photos of Lawrence and his horse. I finally settled on one to serve as the model for the painting for a future photo shoot.

I needed the painting to be only partially complete because the artist would still be working on it, and I had no idea exactly what the actual background would be like, so just under-painted the board in vague dark blue and brown, to suggest the wall with stained glass windows of the Gothic Cathedral movie background at our son's movie studio. Then it took me two days to paint Lawrence and his horse to where they needed to be.

I was very happy with Lawrence's outfit and his horse, but just couldn't get his face right in the painting, even after several attempts. But that would be fine for a painting that was supposed to be under construction. But I doubt I'll finish it after the photo shoot.

Practicing

With a date booked at our son's movie studio, it was time to practice the basic set up at home on the dining room table...

In this photo Lawrence was wearing his formal shirt instead of his chainmail, since I was also planning on shooting the christening of Baron and Naomi's twins, and Lawrence as their godfather, would not be wearing his armour.

I decided that I'd likely be stressed during the photo shoot at the studio, and that it would be easier for me to remove his armour than it would put it on him, so I put his chainmail and wrist guards on him, with plans to shoot the anniversary portrait sequence first, then change him out of his chainmail, and into his formal shirt for the christening photoshoot afterwards.

At the Movie Studio

When we arrived at the movie studio, I proceeded to set up the scene. I was planning on using the Gothic Cathedral background again. Immersion Room's 3D artist, had found the 3D Fantasy Gothic Interior Megapack set from MESHINGUN STUDIO for Baron and Naomi's wedding last year. It was perfect, so they had purchased it. That way we would have legal rights to any photos taken with it.

So, what exactly is a 3D set, you ask? Well, it's a digital program where one can move around in the 'interior space' just like it was a real place. I suppose it's much like being inside a computer game. We can go anywhere 'inside' the cathedral. There's the main hall, lots of passageways, a staircase to balconies overlooking the great hall, a bedrooms upstairs, and even a dungeon in the basement. Any of the interior walls can be rotated to be the background, and all the elements can be changed, including the lighting. There's also an entire furniture package of elements which can be added or removed, like thrones, pews, candle stands, etc.

I wanted to use one of the side walls of the main hall as the background, and our son spent some time making the lighting exactly the same as the lighting in the partially finished painting that Narin would be working on. Lawrence looked magnificent...

Then I set up Narin and his easel....

Then it was time to light the candles...

...and Lawrence and his horse were ready to have their portrait painted.
I was basically shooting forced perspective against the movie background

My sister had been curious about taking doll photos at the movie studio, and had asked to come along, and she took some photos as well...

Each time I was finished photographing a pose, all the candles would get blown out, only to be lit again for the next scene. That way they wouldn't burn down too quickly.

The set was on a moveable riser, which would need to be rotated to photograph Narin and Monica from the side or front...

When I was done, I took everything down, and replaced it with the Christening scene...

Faking a Cathedral

The next day I realized that I should have shot more photos for an actual story involving the painting of Lawrence's portrait. I had been so focused on trying to create a magnificent portrait of Lawrence and his horse, that extra scenes had not even occurred to me, until the next day, and then it was too late.

A few days later I came down with Covid, and it took months to start feeling half decent again. As part of Long Covid, my anxiety levels were through the roof, and I couldn't face the stress of asking for a second photo shoot at the movie studio. Instead I thought I'd try fake it at home. I knew I could handle the actual set pieces, but wasn't too sure about the background. That Gothic Cathedral set was mighty impressive. But I was determined to try.

The most striking features of the cathedral background, other than the actual architecture, are the blue stained glass windows.

I considered painting them on foam core, or even making them out of painted paper like a real stained glass window. But both options sounded like way too much work. So I thought of making blue banners from cloth instead. They'd take less work, and last better than painted paper. So I printed out pictures of the actual stained glass windows, and went through all my blue cotton prints choosing all the ones that were the right colours. I wasn't going to try recreate the actual window designs, but just suggest them with the use of colour and texture.

I decided to make the 'window- banners like all my other pieced banners, using trapezoid shapes, cut them all out, and started piecing them together.

I made two narrow banners, and two wider ones that even had the golden brown vertical stripes like the real windows.

Setting the Scene

I thought my dining room china cabinet would be the perfect background for my 'cathedral', with all the vertical moulding suggesting 'pillars'. But I didn't want the dolls inside to show, so taped black bristol-board inside the cabinet to hide everything inside. Then I taped up the banners.

I laid out the 'cathedral' flooring cloth, and started stacking the bookshelves for the raised throne area, and set up the scene using all the same prop and furniture pieces that I'd used at the movie studio.

I did use my styrofoam pillars and arch for some extra architectural interest, and I had to use the interior 'stone' castle walls to hide everything but the china cabinet. Then with everything in place, it was time to pose the dolls and shoot the rest of the story - the parts that led up to and followed the photos shot at the movie studio...

Telling the Story

I thought the new photos taken at home turned out quite well, although it took some effort to process them all so they'd have the same lighting as in the cathedral set. I hoped people would be too engrossed in the story to really notice (or care) that the photos were taken in two totally separate locations.

My only problem with the story was that Lawrence was in the exact same pose for the entire movie studio photo shoot. I wanted something different with him interacting with his horse, but had never taken any photos like that. So I had to fake one. I went looking through the photos I'd taken last summer, and found a nice one of him looking at his horse. It seemed perfect, but it had the wrong background, so I spent some time in Photoshop replacing the background in the photo with the cathedral background by superimposing Lawrence and his horse on a blurred studio photo....

Original photo

Background photo

Photoshopped photo

I thought I did a half decent job, until I realized Lawrence wasn't holding his sword when he was posing for his portrait in the movie studio photos. He was supposed to be holding the orb. I considered cropping in close so we wouldn't see his sword...

It actually made for a rather nice photo, until I realized that the fur collar of his robe was supposed to be open like in the movie studio photos. So, I found another old photo of Lawrence looking at his horse - while he was holding the orb this time - and the fur collar was open, so I tried again. I started by using the same cathedral photo I'd used the first time, but the top of a pillar ended up flaring straight out of the top of Lawrence's head, creating a major tension point, so I had to start all over again with another background photo. That one turned out perfect!

Horse Manure

I'd already taken down the entire set in the dining room, ready to move onto something new, when the idea of cleaning up after the horse came to me. I couldn't stop laughing at the idea, so I set up the entire set again.

Then I turned my attention to making some 'horse manure'. Now, the real thing is full of bits of undigested hay, since that's what they eat. So I took some of the debris from a bag of mini straw bales I had in storage, and started cutting it up into very fine bits.

Then I mixed the straw with potting soil and some water.

Jan pointed out that horse sh** is not like cow patties, but comes out in large balls. I tried adding some white glue to the mixture, and tried to form some horse pellets, but the stuff refused to stick together into balls, so I gave up, hoping no one would really know the difference. Or maybe the horse just trampled it when he was getting restless?

Anyways, there was plenty for Maya to clean up.....and the nice thing was...my homemade 'manure' didn't smell.