Working from Photos

[snoball]

You could also do several different crops on the same photo (use "save as", name them, save them, and move on) then when you have found different points of interest look over all the crops and see which will make the most satisfying painting.

 

[Hermes2020]

I think this video is relevant in this thread.

 

[ZenDruid]

think this video is relevant in this thread.

It is, almost an hour long but worth it. I went back to read the whole thread, very interesting, starting with Donna's original question, and all the following answers of good advice.

These bring up a variety of related but random ideas that have been running around in my head lately, so I'm going to indulge myself and dump them here.

First, I think art should transcend reality. A photograph is not reality. The camera does not copy reality especially when we swap lenses or zoom in and out. What we see is also not reality. We get light waves through our eyes and our brain sorts them out according to what we've been taught since childbirth.
We can look at a tree, we can draw it, paint it, photograph it, hug it, lick the bark, eat the leaves, draw out sap to make syrup, read pages of scientific taxonomy about the tree, and in the end we still don't know the reality of the tree. Only the tree knows. There's a whole rabbit hole for exploring reality.

As artists, we have the freedom, opportunity and maybe obligation to put our own vision of reality on the model and the picture. I think that's what viewers want to see. Every artist I think of that I like is not slavishly copying "reality", they're expressing their own vision. I think SLG referred well to that.

I have a friend who photographs in film and is also a very good artist in a variety of mediums. Lately he's taken to copying his photographs in hyper-photo-realism in pencil and pen. His draftsmanship is excruciatingly good, sharper than the photograph. He gets applause but I don't see that as art, I see it as illustration.

I took a university course in life drawing in a studio, with other student artists and a real nude model. For the first time, I felt like I had joined the art world. My drawing was tight, I was trying to make an accurate rendition, the instructor wanted me to loosen up and get creative. I didn't understand that then, but I do now.

My last job before retiring, was as director of the Kent-Delord House Museum in Plattsburgh, NY. This was a family house built in the 1700's. We had a good collection, 200 years worth, of original family portraits in oil, one in pastels. I looked at them a lot. It occurred to me that the artist and the person sitting for him spent a lot of time together and there was a lot of energy passing between them that could still be seen in their eyes. Visitors to the museum would ask, of course, if there were any ghost stories about the house. We had a few anecdotal incidents, but I invited them to go take a good look at the portraits.

Here's a brain trick: Take a favorite photo in hand or on screen. Cover one eye with your hand and look at the photo with your dominant eye. At first it looks flat but focus on the background behind the subject, then look at the whole photo again. You should get an illusion of three dimensions. The brain has adjusted. Amaze your friends at the next cocktail party.

Probably none of this helps Donna.

 

[E.J.H.]

Aaah, reality..
It seems our very senses were not designed to perceive reality at all. If you would like to dive in that rabbit hole, check out Donald D. Hoffman....

 

[Donna T]

Thanks everyone for even more thoughts on this subject. Zen, I think you hit the nail on the head with "art should transcend reality."

 

[Enyaw]

it should open the door to your imagination as that is the key to realizing what we could see if we allow it to be. Sometimes we see an animal running on the street and on closer examination it's a black bag blowing in the wind.

 

[JStarr]

I generally work from photographs- my piecemeal time to work and the constant pull on my attention to elsewhere is not conducive to live set-ups. So I like to work from pics.

I used to do all that photo-editing stuff- all the tricks- but I found myself needing those tricks less and less as I allowed my brain to see what it *liked* in the photo. The recent peonies came from a reference from a friend sent to me a few years ago- just a snap of her peony shrub. I liked the way the three blooms in the pic were raised up above most of the foliage, and the leaves were dense- but not nearly as dense as I made them in the work.

The blue camellias didn't work AT ALL for what I liked- this lovely reflected blue light and shadow- absolutely could not recreate that. But I am the artist- I have an artistic license and THAT means I get to do what I want. So, I did- I changed the shadow to one that worked. The reference I used is below- you can see that amazng reflected light and shadow- but it didn't work when I "copied" it. So, I didn't.

I used to make Artistic Licenses for students who were angsting about the work not looking like what they saw, or other frettings about things not being "good enough"; but, I think being an artist means you get to pull out your artistic license, and use it.