Artist Richard Phillips Talks About Painting Robert Pattinson Portrait

Recently, artist Richard Phillips decided to paint some of the brightest young Hollywood stars for his “Most Wanted” Exhibit at the White Cube Gallery in London. The exhibition featured Phillips’ take on stars like Taylor Swift, Zac Efron, Dakota Fanning, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kristen Stewart and, yes, even Robert Pattinson and that famous head of hair.

The show may have wrapped up a few weeks back, but in anticipation of “MTV First: Robert Pattinson,” we wanted to bring you all the best bites from our interview with the artist, who dished about what makes Robert Pattinson one of the “Most Wanted” in Hollywood.

“I think that the greatest pressure for me was getting Robert Pattinson’s expression right because he is…certainly Leo is important in terms of his character and the gravitas he has, but with Robert it’s that kind of knowing smirk or that sexy look in his masculine, yet feminine qualities that people die for that’s a hard thing to grab,” Phillips explained of painting the “Twilight” hottie and wanting to get it just right. “You’ve got all of those components and in a painting how do you bring it together, that’s the thing that becomes the question and I had to answer that in paint.”

Phillips did find the way to make it work, he explained, “One thing that I will say is that having the highlight in his one eye and no highlight in the other eye gives him that knowing look. Like in one eye he already knows you; in the other eye he’s addressing you,” he said. “There’s tricks within the portrait, the little curve outside his mouth, those are the things that bring out his character…that and his tousled hair.”

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