From Virtual to Reality, Jonathan Yeo creates the world’s first large scale, 3D printed sculpture using Tilt Brush. Artist Jonathan Yeo created the world’s first large scale 3D printed sculptural self portrait using Tilt Brush. As part of ‘From Life’ at the Royal Academy of Arts, Yeo takes you inside his studio and explains his process in creating the portrait. Put your cardboard on and experience the future of portraiture in virtual reality.
Over a period of 18 months Jonathan Yeo collaborated with Google Arts & Culture and Google Tilt Brush to create the first physical free-standing sculpture in metal made using Google’s virtual reality painting software, Tilt Brush.
From Scan to Sculpture
The process behind Jonathan’s Homage to Paolozzi (Self Portrait)
Yeo’s large scale bronze sculptural self-portrait is entitled Homage to Paolozzi (Self Portrait), and marked the artists first foray into sculpture. The project represents an evolution in the tradition of creating self-portraiture, as for the first time Yeo produced a work derived from three-dimensional scans in virtual reality rather than looking in a mirror or working from photographs.
To create the sculpture, Yeo first scanned his head using LightStage, a facial-scanning technology from the optical company OTOY.
The scan of Jonathan’s head was then imported this into Tilt Brush and Yeo began painting his self-portrait with a virtual brush.
Once painted, Yeo experimented with 3D printing the virtual sketch. Crucial was capturing the right balance between the solidity required for sculpture and the characteristic lightness of the brushstrokes.
Once the right balance was found, the artwork could then be printed directly from Tilt Brush in a series of pieces…
That were then assembled to create the sculpture which was then cast in bronze at Pangolin, one of the worlds leading foundries.
“As someone who has always wanted to work in three dimensions but never learnt how to do it in the traditional way, it is exciting to have helped create a new process which could probably best described as a hybrid of painting and sculpture. The reason to use self- portraiture was to demonstrate how you could employ 3D scanning to look at yourself in a way that hasn’t been possible until now.
What’s exciting is that the combination of this, along with the latest virtual reality and 3D printing technologies, is potentially a new way of making sculpture and one that might inspire other artists from a range of disciplines to have a go too. I hope these pieces not only show how artists can make use of new technology in unexpected ways, but also offer a speculative glimpse of how we all might use them in the future”
Turning Virtual World Into A Reality
Artist Jonathan Yeo, Britain’s leading contemporary portraitist, has created his first three dimensional work: the world’s first sculptural self-portrait, designed by hand in virtual reality and cast in bronze.
Yeo has become known for his figurative portraits that explore a plethora of themes and narratives. The artist’s experimental approach to traditional portraiture has led to commissions of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, fellow artists Damien Hirst and Grayson Perry, and peace activist Malala Yousafzai, among many others.
Here, Yeo talks about his creative process and how combining physical and virtual creation could open up a world of possibilities for other artists to experiment with.
Can you describe the piece you’ve created as part of this project?
The artwork is called Homage to Paolozzi, and is a sculpture that was painted by hand in virtual reality, 3D printed and cast in bronze. The project was a world first, and was exhibited as part of the exhibition From Life at the Royal Academy, an exhibition exploring how artists’ practice is evolving as technology opens up new ways to create.
What was it inspired by?
I am interested in the potential of VR as an art tool and I agreed to experiment with how it would be further developed. While experimenting, I kept being struck by how easy and intuitive it was to use, and for someone like me, who had done very little in three dimensions before and never made sculpture before, it seemed to be a great instrument for designing in three dimensions.
Apart from the execution, does the piece differ from your usual work?
The software allowed me to make the same gestural brushstrokes and marks as I would make in an expressive painting, yet in a three-dimensional space. However, I’m used to making paintings where I know how it is looking as I go along. With this project I instead had to take all sorts of gambles on processes and materials and I only got to see the final sculpture for the first time as it was just cast in bronze at the foundry.
What’s really exciting is how the final bronze structure precisely captures the free, expressive movements that were previously only possible in paintings. The result is a hybrid of painting and virtual creation, and could open up a world of possibilities for other artists to experiment and take this new medium much further.
What were your first thoughts about working on this project, seeing as you’d not previously worked three dimensionally before?
Amazing as the software was, I initially couldn’t see it fit into my work, both because I was completely cut off from reality and at first there was no way of exporting the artwork, as the software wasn’t designed to actually replicate something in the real world. The eureka moment came when we found a way of importing a three-dimensional scan of me into the program and then it occurred to me that it would be interesting to try and make a sculpture that would reflect the abstract gestural method I use to make paintings. Using virtual reality, I could explore sculpting using the skills developed in my painting practice and within my own studio environment, which would have never been possible without this technology.
What is your creative process? And how did it change incorporating this new technology into your approach?
My method of work is very traditional, I use oil paint on canvas and I paint ‘from life’. Like many other artists, I’ve always been interested in self-portraits and their history. Initially, artists were only able to make self-portraits using a mirror, and later with the advent of photography they could use photos, but even then the images were only two-dimensional. This technology marks a new approach to creating self-portraits since, for the first time, I was able to produce works deriving from three-dimensional scans in virtual reality rather than looking in a mirror or working from photographs.
What part did Tilt Brush play in the creation of this artwork?
Tilt Brush technology allowed me to virtually sculpt ‘from life’. Having scanned my head using Light Stage facial-scanning technology, I imported the 3D scan into Tilt Brush, which allowed me to use it as a reference to paint a self-portrait with a virtual brush.
This is one of the great advantages of Tilt Brush, that you can import pictures and 3D renders. To use this to virtually ‘work from life’ and sculpt a self-portrait entirely within virtual reality was particularly exciting. It allowed me to directly use my experience and techniques, which have more in common with painting than any traditional sculpture methods, in an entirely new way.
Why did you want to cast the sculpture in bronze? What does it bring to the artwork?
By casting the finished piece in a permanent material such as bronze, it hopefully underlines the potential to translate ideas from the digital to the real world. Furthermore, bronze captures that sense of permanence, which contrasts so beautifully with the ethereal and almost non-existing quality of the virtual drawing. By this means, it has a much more powerful and permanent feel than most 3D printed objects alone have.
What were the challenges of creating this piece?
One of the biggest challenges was to find a way of turning a virtual drawing into a real physical object. To find the right result we had to experiment with several prototype 3D prints to work out just how thick the paint stroke in VR needed to be to find the perfect balance between solidity and a lightness and fluidity that was able to stay true to the virtual sculpting process.
What are the benefits of using Tilt Brush, 3D printing and other modern technologies in art?
Tilt Brush can release an artist from the limitations of medium. By making solid structures based precisely on the kind of gestural marks that painters would normally use on canvas, this tool opens the door to an entirely new process, both for artists already working in three dimensions and those, like me, with little or no previous experience of sculpture.
Jonathan Yeo
Jonathan Yeo (born 18 December 1970 in London, England) is a British artist who rose to international prominence in his early 20s as a contemporary portraitist, having painted Kevin Spacey, Dennis Hopper, Cara Delevingne, Damien Hirst, Prince Philip, Erin O’Connor, Tony Blair, and David Cameron among others. GQ has called him ‘one of the worlds most in-demand portraitists’. He was educated at Westminster School.
His unauthorised 2007 portrait of George W. Bush, created from cuttings of pornographic magazines brought him worldwide notoriety, shown in London, New York and Los Angeles.
Yeo’s 2016 mid-career survey at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle followed a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2013 and the Lowry in Manchester in 2014.
Yeo was the subject of a BBC Culture Show Special in September 2013. The monograph The Many Faces of Jonathan Yeo, featuring works from throughout his career, was published by London-based publisher Art / Books in the same month.
His paintings are included within the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, The Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark, and The Royal Collection.
In February 2016, Yeo’s portrait of the actor Kevin Spacey in the role of President Francis J. Underwood, from the Netflix series House of Cards, was unveiled at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Spacey unveiled the painting in character as the fictional President Underwood, joking “I’m pleased the Smithsonian continues to prove itself as a worthwhile institution. I’m one step closer to convincing the rest of the country that I am the president.” Netflix made a short film of the collaboration between the museum, actor, and artist to promote the fourth season of House of Cards, which premiered that same evening.
In March 2016, Yeo’s largest retrospective to date opened at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark. A new series of paintings of the actor and model Cara Delevingne was unveiled at the museum as part of the exhibition. This series of portraits was made over an eighteen-month period and is concerned with image making and performed identity. Yeo said: “the way we manipulate and read self-portrait images, or ‘selfies’, in the last five years has far more in common with the activity of the 16th-century portrait artists and audiences than any art movement since the birth of photography”. A portrait of the former Danish Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was also unveiled at the opening of this exhibition and will remain at the museum as part if its permanent collection. A new monograph, titled ‘In The Flesh’, was published by the museum to accompany the show.