The Shocking Truth: Whistler Had A Tiger Mother

A few months ago, I read an excerpt from Amy Chua‘s controversial book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in which she describes her strict, no-nonsense approach to raising her two daughters, which included making them master the piano and violin. It made me think of a famous painting, and I decided to do a parody called “Whistler’s Tiger Mother.” Here’s the final:

I thought it might be funny to create a caricature of James Whistler as a boy, using
a photo of Whistler as an adult. I found a photo which was already in color mode RGB, and imported it into Photoshop. I extracted the head using the Pen and Magic Wand, then flipped it horizontally. The flat side of the head looked completely unnatural from that angle, so I used the Liquify tool to restyle his hair.

I needed to condense the features without distorting the head, so I copied the features, deleted them, then pasted them onto a new layer. I used the Liquify tool to condense the features, then moved them into the lower portion of the face and merged
the two layers.

I used the Pen tool to select and isolate certain portions of the face, then used a soft watercolor brush at low opacity to paint over the seams and blend the skin tones. Using the Pen tool also allowed me to stroke the resulting paths and add greater definition to the cheek and chin lines.  

I used a soft brush with blending mode = Overlay to add some color to the face and brown highlights to the hair.

When I imported the finished head into the larger drawing, I realized two things: the
skin was too pale, and of course Young Whistler would have a frown on his face since he was being forced to practice the violin. I used a Hue/Saturation color adjustment
to deepen the skin tones, and the Liquify tool to create the frown. I also used the Pen tool to more sharply define the eyebrows.

What did the real young Jimmy Whistler look like? Well, there he is on the right at about age thirteen.

Here’s the final again: