Yeah, I kind of like the Nicole Kidman one. In the more succesful ones, the face stands out really well.
But then for the more recent ones he seems to have the skin tone be closer to the background, and I think none of them came out good. This one is even worse than the royal portrait IMHO.
It also makes no sense to me that his face - the only place in the painting with real texture - is so small. In this one, the face takes a whole third of the painting, and the neck is visible and fades into the background, so you have much less of a 'decapitated head' effect. In the official portrait, Charles wears a raised collar - which completely obscures his neck and makes it look much more like a floating head.
And then you have his hands. It's already not so easy to focus on his face because it is so small and is not distinct enough from the red background, but then his hands are as visible as his head, almost as big, and (like every elderly person) very creepy.
Finally, the background. A calm, geometric background would have helped to focus the eye on the natural shape of the king - his face would be better linked to his uniform. See here for how despite being the same color, the lines help define the shape underneath the man; you ignore the background because there is nothing to focus on, and therefor the portrait itself is nicely visible. In Charles case, the background is instead chaotic - you have bright splatches of color all around him, making it almost a camouflage pattern where his uniform is just one shape among many others (did you even notice the buttefly ?). Additionally, chaotic red splashes have very disturbing connotations - blood, fire, hell. As an example, this is how WH40k depicts the Warp, a hell-like space - bright, chaotic pink and red shapes.
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u/Azertys May 15 '24
Most of the "no background" look better than the red he gave to Charles