I have read all this tread with interrest. It came just in time for me, because I was asking myself those questions since few weeks.

I don't think I can add much, except a few little thoughts. I always consider photo like a tool , not a perfect one ( Happily because it would be hard to still find an interest in painting)

The funny thing when I was painting some trompe l'oeil is that even the best full size photo will never fool you, and to reproduce exactly this photo with paint either. I was used to paint from life and photo, but the finished painting was finally very different from the photo ( I had to change some perspective some contrasts...to make them more believable) But it was a long time ago.

Those 6 last months, I painted exclusively from photo. Portrait was a new field for me. I think I learned a lot working from photos, but I will never know if I would have learned faster if I had work only from life. I needed practice in mixing paint , softening edges etc... Some basics exercices I could easely do from photos.

During my WIP, I realised that I was using photo not only because it was convenient, but also like a crutch : I was afraid of working from life.
Afraid of having awful results, afraid of having to work a lot, afraid of taking much more time.

I drew some nudes from life 12 years ago, but I was sure that I lost all I knew... Anyway, I pluck up courage, and began some self portraits, I was very surprised that finally it was not as awful as I was expected.

I lived so many artistic emotions during those 6 last months, but I have to say I'm once more overexcited, and couldn't sleep once more : Yesterday I could draw my first self portrait with a real likeness, and then went to my first open studio ( I can't believe that I found a very cheap, not far from my home open studio: with the help from a supportive husband I will go each week!!!!)

So that's it, I woke up for the second time. I feel a total freedom, I feel free to work with photo or not. I too will need a huge handbag to put the sketchbook near the juice, the cookies, the diapers etc...

Thanks Sharon,
it's not the first self portrait, it's the third : the two first I went too quikly in the details ( as always)and the drawing was wrong... It' s such a relief to feel no more this fear.

Marina,

I think this observation about the trompe l'oeil visual phenomenon is brilliant. The difference between the photo image and the trompe l'oeil artwork is what Mark Twain might have said was the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. (He actually said it about the right word and the almost right word.)

It's so very difficult to try to "say" what's missing in the photo that one could see by working from the object or subject itself, and this is the perfect example. As you suggested, no eye is "fooled" by the photograph. That magical quality is added by the observant artist who can accurately translate those observations to the canvas or paper.

It is that deft translation of the actually observed that distinguishes both the process and the product. It may be difficult to articulate the distinction, but we know it when we see it.

Thanks for lending that example to this particular discussion.

[Sharon was hoping to get the text of the referenced article posted. Here it is:]

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Secret is out about the latest presidential portrait

By Edward J. Sozanski
INQUIRER ART CRITIC

You and I aren't supposed to know this, but Bucks County artist Nelson Shanks is painting a portrait of William Jefferson Clinton for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington.

This seemingly innocuous fact is being treated as a state secret because the commissioning of presidential portraits for the White House and the portrait gallery, the two principal collections, follows Alice-in-Wonderland logic.

Artists are engaged and presidents sit for them, but no one in government will admit that pigment is being applied to canvas until the process is completed and the portraits are unveiled.

Not identifying the artists ensures against embarrassment if a portrait is rejected by its subject. Lyndon Johnson denounced Peter Hurd's White House portrait of him as "the ugliest thing I ever saw."

Ironically, Hurd, Andrew Wyeth's late brother-in-law, subsequently donated the painting to the portrait gallery.

Given Shanks' extensive experience, his glittering reputation, and the magnitude of his successes to date, his Clinton portrait isn't likely to flop.

He already has one president to his credit - Ronald Reagan, whom he immortalized for the Union League of Philadelphia about the time the 40th president left office in 1988.

Reagan isn't even Shanks' most famous subject. That would be the late Princess Diana, whom he painted in 1994. His scrapbook also includes former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (twice), former Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and tenor Luciano Pavarotti.

So when President Clinton recently tapped Shanks to put him in the portrait gallery's Hall of Presidents, the 63-year-old artist wasn't awestruck.

"My career doesn't depend on painting Bill Clinton," he remarked during a chat in his studio overlooking the Delaware River in Andalusia.

"It's not exactly my direction. I try to push portraits as far as I can beyond the academic, traditional, straightforward boardroom style. I try to bring the art out."

However, the Clinton commission poses a special challenge even for an artist as skilled as Shanks. His interpretation has to concede something to the 200-year-old tradition that requires leaders of the republic to look appropriately august.

Tradition has produced a procession of sober poses, dark suits and earnest expressions, softened here and there in more recent portraits by hints of a smile. "I'm not crazy about business suits," Shanks commented, "but there's probably no other way to paint a president right now."

Furthermore, he added, the Clinton portrait has to be set in the Oval Office. He isn't sure how he's going to manage that, given that Clinton no longer works there. "I have no idea how I'll get access."

Is Shanks painting the "official" Clinton portrait? It depends on whom you ask. Carolyn Carr, the portrait gallery's deputy director, said there wasn't a single official version among the several that would be created for places such as the Clinton library.

Betty Monkman, the White House curator, disagrees: "We consider our portraits the official ones."

A Clinton portrait for the White House collection is also in the works, but Monkman declined to identify the artist who's painting it, in keeping with the aforementioned policy.

Monkman did confirm, and Carr concurred, that Shanks isn't painting both portraits, although a few artists have done so. The most recent example was Everett R. Kinstler, who did both Gerald Fords.

(Newsweek magazine has reported that Washington artist Simmie Knox, a graduate of Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, is also painting a Clinton portrait, but did not say whether it was for the White House or some other location.)

The secrecy protocol for presidential portraits also deflected a query regarding why Clinton chose Shanks for the portrait gallery commission. A spokeswoman in his transition office said the former president couldn't comment on the matter until the portrait was accepted.

Although Shanks' portrait is destined for a public collection, it will be paid for with private funds donated by benefactors who aren't yet being named. Carr said the amount of Shanks' fee hasn't been discussed. He has received about $200,000 for a full-length portrait.

Shanks didn't seek the Clinton commission; it came to him, which isn't surprising for an artist who has been described by D. Dodge Thompson, chief of exhibits at the National Gallery of Art, as "the most talented contemporary traditional portraitist."

"A number of collectors of my paintings are connected with the president [Clinton] in one way or another," Shanks said. "There must be 10 people who have told him that I should paint his portrait."

The protocol for selection of presidential portraitists puts the White House curator in charge, Carr said. "It goes through a fairly lengthy process of interviewing artists. Our contribution is advisory," she said. "The president decides who he wants to represent
him."

Shanks went down to Washington on Dec. 15 to show Clinton his portfolio, which apparently impressed the president, because the following week, Shanks was asked to do a study.

"They gave me an hour and a half at 5:30 on a Monday afternoon," he recalled. "I told them I couldn't do it, that it could take me an hour to get set up, and besides, at that time, it was dark at 5:30. I need daylight."

Instead of painting a study from life, Shanks brought a photographer. During a photo session in the private quarters of the White House that lasted about 90 minutes, he clicked off close to 500 exposures.

During the session, Shanks said he and the president talked some about books - "I got the impression that he reads a book a day" - and also discussed a Childe Hassam interior, one of several works by the artist hanging in the room.

"We also joked a little about presidential portraits," the artist added. "He told me that he and Harrison Ford had been joking recently about how chins drop with age, and he didn't want to look that way."

Unfortunately, the photographs in lieu of a life study haven't proved to be very useful.

"I only had one or two that were even conceivably acceptable," Shanks said. "Not one of them would be an expression you'd want to use in a finished painting.

"Photographs and reality are just night and day. In reality, the information is all there. A photograph is just kind of a hint."

That being the case, and given that Shanks works traditionally, why not make preliminary drawings instead of photos?

That's no good either, he replied.

"I almost never do drawings, because I have found over the years that doing something in one medium and translating into another doesn't work. I like to conceive a painting in real scale and in color," he explained, noting that the Italian baroque master Caravaggio
worked similarly.

To help him do that, Shanks sometimes uses custom-made mannequins, especially for clothing details. The one he had made to represent Clinton stands in his studio, dressed in the obligatory conservative suit and holding a portfolio.

After the photo session, Shanks put in 10 hours on the portrait in his studio before he was called down to Washington on Jan. 10 so Clinton could examine what he had done.

That clinched it. As a Clinton aide explained, "The president was reviewing the work of other artists as well, and he decided to give Nelson Shanks the opportunity to do the portrait gallery portrait."

In other words, the commission, still not contractual, was contingent on the president's final approval. Until then, it didn't exist - officially. According to Carr, at that point even the benefactors who were going to pay for the portrait didn't know who was going to
paint it.

Pending notification of Clinton's availability for posing, Shanks has put the presidential portrait aside to work on several other unfinished commissions, including one for Philadelphia philanthropist Dorrance "Dodo" Hamilton.

"As far as I'm concerned, the serious posing hasn't been done," he said. "But I'm now guaranteed that he's going to do considerable sittings. I'm not sure how much that will be, but I'm not going to do any more until I find out."

Shanks said that once the posing sessions begin, he might begin the portrait from scratch. "That's probably what will happen, because I can do more from life and get further in a hour than I can in 20 hours from photographs."

The artist said that he expected the sittings would take place in the spring, but that location hadn't been decided.

"I'm hoping he'll come here. It's also possible in New York because I have a great studio there, and I understand he'll be spending a lot of time in the city."

Shanks said he thought he'd prefer to do a full-length portrait, about seven feet tall by four wide, with Clinton perhaps leaning on a mantle and holding a book.

Full-length poses aren't common in presidential portraiture, which began with Gilbert Stuart's famous paintings of George Washington. Both the White House and portrait gallery collections begin with a Stuart.

The White House has a version of the so-called Lansdowne portrait, which is full-length, while the gallery owns Stuart's bust-length Athenaeum portrait jointly with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Both collections contain works by highly regarded American painters, although these are more prominent in the 19th century than in the 20th.

Besides Stuart, White House artists include John Trumbull, John Vanderlyn, Rembrandt Peale, Samuel F.B. Morse, Eastman Johnson and John Singer Sargent. The portrait gallery has some of these, plus George Caleb Bingham, Edmund C. Tarbell and Norman
Rockwell, who did President Nixon.

By and large, though, neither portrait collection is first-rate in aesthetic terms, especially for the decades after World War I. The quality at the White House began to slide after Sargent painted Theodore Roosevelt and Anders Zorn portrayed William Howard Taft.

Zorn's painting of Grover Cleveland is one of the most animated portraits at the gallery. Generally speaking, though, the examples there, like many at the White House, are pedestrian.

Shanks is hoping to achieve a more distinguished result.

"There are times when I love to play all kinds of complicated games in painting," he observed. "But I think this is one case when I need to be fairly straightforward. I'll just try to paint the man, his intelligence, his amiability and his stature, maybe paint him fairly close to humor and try to get it just right."

Edward J. Sozanski's e-mail address is [email protected].

This are my favorite highlights from the article. I've read it some time ago, but it's still like fresh ink to my eyes.

Well, this quote is a little interesting too! ;)

Yeah, for $200,000, I'd be willing to try to do a life painting of a whirling dervish with pet hummingbirds as they went through the express lane at Home Depot (I had to slow them down a little there, in order to get the mouth right.)

L O L
 

I couldn't expect anything different from you Steve.

I only have a few minutes but wanted to put in a few cents worth. Thank you Paul for your contribution to this wonderful thread, of which I have downloaded to read in the evening when I have the chance.

You are all artists I admire greatly, who I learn from daily.
I am eternally grateful for all of you, your intelligence, your thought- provocing comments, the time you take out of your day to share with us. You are all GREAT teachers to we students who come here to soak up as much as we can.

God Bless!
Patty

Painting From Photos Is Easier
 

Painting from photos is a lot easier than painting from life, because you are translating one flat picture into another flat surface and you are only concerned with angles and flat proportions. Painting from life requires translating three dimensions into two and it is definitely more difficult. That is why painting from photos is something that should be left to the seasoned artist who has done hundreds of life paintings and he can see in the photo a lot more that we can. I think that beginners should abstain from painting from photos, because by doing so, they will never learn how to see like an artist which is the whole essence of painting. Beginning artists that rely on photos get a false sense of security, because with little work they can paint recognizable figures or faces, forgetting that likeness is only a very small part of a portrait. A very common reason for this practice is because we do not always follow the old academic rule of not using color until one can master the drawing, and the other reason is that when you post a painting for a critique, they ask you to place along side the "reference" photo. So in a way ,there is a subtle or not so subtle encouragement to use photos. I suggest that the oil critiques for beginners should be limited to paintings done from life and that those who use photos, should limit themselves to submit monochromatic drawings. Experienced painters who paint from photos do not need a critique anyway.