Visual Interest: Struzan Rebalancing Part 3

After doing 2 previous Struzan rebalancing studies, I still felt like I was missing a lot of direction on exactly where and how to rebalance on the face. The more I started digging the more I noticed that Struzan uses several different techniques just for rebalancing the face. This study will only focus on one: What I’m calling a “Top Heavy Spec Rebalance”.

In the photos below, we can see the original image and Struzan’s rendition. The Struzan painting removes spec from the lower half of the face, and emphasizes the spec on the nose, around the eye, and on the forehead. Basically this seems to keep the eyes as a focus point by having bright eyes, a darkened face, and bright spec around the eyes. This creates a look of a “Top Heavy Spec Rebalance”.

Below I noticed I could better notice the general rebalance when I blurred and desaturated the image to focus on the gist of what Struzan was going for.

So I decided to use this visual test on other Struzan paintings compared to the original photo to better spot this specific rebalance: