To give me a sense of his underpainting technique, Elins walked me through a sample image. It involved the transformation of a photograph that Elins shot of a woman clad in a bikini (figure 1) into a fully realized pin-up girl (figure 2).

More obviously a painting than the work featured on previous pages, it shows just how far Elins is willing to go to in pursuit of what Ingres himself might have called "the probity of art." True to the Classical form, the final image observes a cool and idealized formality. While no attempt was made to make the woman thinner--she is, after all, as skinny as a rail--Elins removed moles, softened bony transitions, added a subtle tan, and removed the effects of gravity (figure 3). The remarkable thing is that this was accomplished not by retouching but by re-creating the scene. Every pixel was painted.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

From a technical standpoint, Elins's approach was simple. "This wasn't about being a 'power user.' In fact, that kind of tool-based thinking, from an artistic perspective--it's all a bunch of nonsense." Yet to repeat what he has done would be almost impossible for all but a select few. Starting with a model who, it must be said, already enjoyed the benefits of flawless teeth, hair, eyelashes, makeup, and cuticles (figure 4, upper left), Elins used the Paintbrush and Clone Stamp tools to meticulously apply a porcelain primer to his subject (figure 4, upper right), which he built up until he had rendered every detail in sculptural perfection (figure 4, lower left). "I redrew her eyes, her eyelashes, lips, nostrils, chin, the highlights, the shadows--I redrew the curls in her hair." Elins even performed bone surgery, reshaping her left jaw to form a symmetrical, tapering curve (figure 4, lower right).

Figure 4

Some might question the art, others the merit, others the ethics. But the real question is, why? Why spend hours achieving a faithful studio photograph and then treat it like an underpainting?

"Well, it's hard to explain. I didn't really plan on this career, so I haven't put my finger on a point in the sand and said, 'This is how I will work.' What happened was, I started doing a lot of celebrity stuff, and the guys I work with sat me down and said, 'This is all fine, but what we love about your work is when you do that thing that you do--when you do that painting stuff.' And I said, 'But then it looks like a painting. These are photographs.' They were like, 'Who cares? That's what you do best.' So the approach, the style, came out of a dialogue. And it's still very much in a state of evolution.

"I guess what it's about for me is, this work is way more personal because I've defined all these shapes. Whether anybody likes them or not doesn't matter. What matters is that I've touched every piece of this image. Nothing that came out of the camera is left. I want these pieces to be unquestionably mine."