A three-dimensional portrait of the Harry Potter series author, J K Rowling was recently unveiled by the author at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The Gallery's trustees had commissioned Stuart Pearson Wright, who won the gallery's BP Portrait Award in 2001, to paint the author of the Harry Potter books, reports Timesonline.
His full-length portrait, showing her at a table with a notepad and a plate of boiled eggs, is the first painting of the author to enter a public collection. Although she posed at her home in Perthshire, the portrait alludes to her life as a writer and her role as a mother.
Rowling has said that the character and plot for the Harry Potter books came to her "fully formed" during a train journey from Manchester to London in 1990. Later, as a single mother living in Edinburgh, she continued working on the manuscript in longhand, often in a cafi to keep warm.
In creating a three-dimensional setting, a construction using oil paint on board with coloured pencil on paper, Wright said that he had been influenced by 18th-century toy theatres.
He said: "It felt like being a kind of director bringing together a set design, actors and props and then lighting the whole thing."
{{/usCountry}}He said: "It felt like being a kind of director bringing together a set design, actors and props and then lighting the whole thing."
{{/usCountry}}The portrait plays with perspective, using the technique of Regency toy theatres. The figure was placed in a threedimensional space with a raked floor to suggest distance. The props, including the table and chair, were placed at angles, to trick the eye into seeing two or three dimensions according to the position of the viewer.