Want to show off perfect skin in your picture? Forget airbrushing or Photoshop retouching, simply contact Marco Grassi, who has mastered the art of creating such realistic oil paint portraits that depict unblemished skin, so much so, that it’s hard to tell whether it’s a painting or a photograph.
This 30-year-old Italian artist explains his process on allure.com, “The process always starts from an idea, from some sketches, but in most cases arises from an intuition – something that you perceive and that’s defined over time even when the work is about to end.”
Grassi has mastered the art of depicting human skin, especially female skin, in its purest form. His magic brush removes unwanted features, like skin pores, freckles, hair, discoloration, stubbles, chapped lips, dark circles, and any other imperfections. However, it’s not only skin that Grassi likes to paint, but also subjects, such as half-human and half-statues, some dressed in colorful fabrics or decked in futuristic jewelry.
Grassi aims to move people through his paintings and admits that his aim is not to hide skin imperfections, but make it appear as natural as possible. Little wonder his paintings possess elements of hyperrealism and surrealism. He explains on boredpanda.com, “My goal is to stir deep emotions, trying to make people more sensitive. I want to combine reality and surrealism, exploring human thoughts and nature in a more personal way.”
Of course, doing such detailed work is not easy and is highly time-consuming, since his paintings require extreme attention in all of its phases. According to him, his paintings can take anywhere between a few months and a few years to complete, depending on their size and complexity.
For Grassi, the challenge is to always maintain a high level of quality in creating such realistic artworks. And he strives to steer clear from imitating photography. His passion is depicted by a caption on his website: ‘Art is my life. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I cannot escape the need to paint’.
Grassi is popular on the internet and on Instagram alone he has a following of over 871,000 fans.
Marco Grassi
